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Latest Date stamped below. A 
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University of Illinois Library 





M32 





THE HEAVENLY LADDER 
COMPTON MACKENZIE 





THE 
HEAVENLY LADDER 


BY 
COMPTON MACKENZIE 


Author of “The Parson’s Progress,’ “The Altar Steps,’ “Youth's 
Encounter,’ “Carnival,” “Poor Relations,’ ete. 





NEW W&h YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1924, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


@D 


THE HEAVENLY LADDER 


SaeetVAGeeeen 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


I 

IT 
III 
IV 
V 
VI 
VII 
Vill 
IX 
xX 
XI 
XIT 
XIII 


~ XIV 


XV 


a 


XVII 
XVIII 
XIX 


BOX 
OXXII 
OG0Ml 
ae XLV 
Pox 
aLXXVI 


The Parish : 
Institution and Induction . 
Harvest Home . 

The Vicarage 

Four Letters . 
The Sunday School. . 
Candlemas 

The Tangye ee 
The Stone Altar 

Good Friday 

The Easter Vestry . 
The Echoing Green 
The Snake i 
The Day of ees 
The New Bishop 

War . 

Cruelty : 

A Christmas Letter . 
The Crib 

Visitation 

Deprivation . 

The Stranger 
Impressionism 

The Bishop’s Shite 
De Profundis : 
The Heavenly Ladder . 


PAGE 
dt 


33 
51 


83 

QI 
11g 
135 
bdo 
ISI 
168 
180 
IgI 
215 
222 
238 
248 
257 
264 
274 
288 


292 


313 
323 
339 


The author wishes to repudiate most emphat- 
ically the existence of any portraits either in this 
volume or in the preceding volume, THE PARSON’S 
PROGRESS, or in the first volume, THE ALTAR STEPS, 
with one exception, which ts the portrait of Father 
Rowley. It 1s impossible in a novel of this char- 
acter for the wretched author not to hurt some- 
bodys feelings, and he destres to apologize im 
advance for every corn on which he may unwit- 
tingly tread. He takes this opportunity of adding 
that, with the exception of St. Tugdual’s, Nance- 
pean, he is the architect of every church m ths 
volume, 


THE HEAVENLY LADDER 


CHAPTER I 
THE PARISH 


ARK LIDDERDALE had been anxious to celebrate 

the feast of St. Michael and All Angels on his first 
Sunday in Nancepean; but his predecessor had left him a 
church so ill-equipped that he was obliged to wait until the 
arrival from London of the vestments and sacred vessels 
and furniture presented by his late vicar. He did not want 
to create a wrong impression in the parish by beginning in 
one way and continuing in another. He wanted the change 
in the style of worshipping to be complete, the transition to 
Catholicism to be rapid and sudden. 

“Well, ’tis maybe so well to bide till Harvest Home next 
Sunday,” his host of the Hanover Inn averred. 

“Harvest Home?’ Mark repeated in something like con- 
sternation. Of all festivals this was the last he would have 
chosen to inaugurate his cure of Nancepean. 

“We belong to have our Harvest Home the first Sunday 
in October month,’ William John Evans explained. “And 
Chapel belong to have theirs the Sunday after. Chapel do 
always belong to close down for our Sunday, and we do 
always belong to close down for their Sunday.” 

Mark was perplexed. His first impulse was to insist that 
he was not going to overlay the octave of Michaelmas with 
pumpkins and vegetable marrows; but he knew Cornwall 
well enough to be sure that by such an act of omission he 
should offend his parishioners more deeply than by the most 
conspicuous act of commission. In view of the many diffi- 
culties before him it was surely better to allow this one 

II 


12 The Heavenly Ladder 


compromise with the existing state of affairs and to take 
advantage of the church’s being fuller than usual to set 
forth his own plans for the future. For one thing he should 
have to make it quite clear that there was not to be any 
running in double harness with the dissenters. Mark looked 
back with some bitterness at his predecessor’s broadminded 
habits; most of what the world called toleration was either 
laziness or cowardice. 

“By the way, who are the churchwardens?’ he asked. 
“And who is the sexton?” 

“Gabriel Pascoe were made sexton when old man Timbury 
took and died; but his son Tom does mostly all the work,” 
William John Evans replied. 

“My dear life, I’m glad to hear ’ee call it work, William 
John,” his wife interrupted fiercely. “I wouldn’t ever have 
called it work.” 

“He do play the harmonium service time and do keep the 
churchyard fitty,’ Evans argued. 

“Yes, when ’tis summertime and the visitors is here,” 
Mrs. Evans went on. “But from now till April month that 
churchyard is a disgrace.” 

The landlord’s bright blue eyes met for a brief moment his 
wife’s sharp features and glowing contemptuous gaze; but 
they soon drooped like a pair of gay flags lowered in sur- 
render. 

“Aw, Tom Pascoe isn’t so bad,” he mumbled. 

“Well, I do call him a good-for-nothing lazy rascal, and 
if I was Mr. Lidderdale I wouldn’t lev him bury himself 
in my churchyard, lev alone bury other people.” 

Mrs. Evans stood firmly upon her opinion, one thin arm 
crooked and its long thin hand spread fanwise on her meagre 
hip. No more angular piece of womanhood was imaginable 
than she standing thus; yet the sincerity of her passionate 
disapproval was so tremendous that it gave a classic beauty, 
to her countenance and to her form a slim and supple grace. 

“What about the churchwardens?’ Mark interrupted. 

“T belong to be one of ’em,’” Evans announced with an 
embarrassed grin at his wife. 

She sniffed loudly. 


The Parish 13 


“And t’other were old William Pellow; but he died May 
month, and Parson Morse had a mind to make Job Lam- 
bourne down to Carwithen vicar’s warden. But he put off 
asking the man, and then Parson died himself.” 

“T shall have to think about a suitable successor,” said 
Mark. “And now, Mrs. Evans, I must ask you to put me 
up until I can get some furniture into the Vicarage.” 

He blessed his good fortune in coming like this to the 
Hanover Inn. Mrs. Evans might be a discouraging critic of 
his flock, and William John might be vague about the duties 
and responsibilities of a churchwarden, but he felt at home 
with them; and the keen interest that their boy Donald took 
in all his plans for making St. Tugdual’s a living church 
again was of the happiest augury for his success with the 
children of Nancepean, and through them with their elders. 

“T ought to go in to Rosemarket as soon as possible,” 
Mark went on, “and choose the necessary furniture for the 
Vicarage. I have enough for my sitting-room; but I shall 
want some for my dining-room and for two bedrooms, 
which is all that I can furnish at present. Oh yes, and 
there’s the kitchen, isn’t there?’ he added, with a guilty 
look at Mrs. Evans. 

“Aw, my dear life,” she exclaimed, “was ever anything 
like men made since the beginning of the world?” 

“They was made before women,” the husband guffawed. 
“And ’twas woman as caused all the trouble,” he added. 

“What nonsense you do talk, William John.” 

“Who give Adam the apple then?” he challenged. 

“There was no call for the foolish crayture to eat it, was 
there?” she retorted. 

“How not?” William John persisted. “If the man hadn’t 
eaten it, she wouldn’t have given him a moment’s peace and 
quiet till he did.” 

“T’m sure if I was a man I’d be ashamed to talk so silly,” 
his wife declared. 

Mark interposed at this point to ask if William John 
could drive him into Rosemarket one morning and help him 
with his furniture. Mrs. Evans poured scorn upon the 
suggestion. 


14 The Heavenly Ladder 


“Whatever would you and William John be buying?” she 
demanded. ‘Why, ’twas only a week ago I sent him in to 
buy me a new frying-pan, and he left it to the shoemaker’s.” 

“T went back for it, didn’t I?” 

“Yes, and when you went back you left Donald’s boots 
behind, and the child cried his eyes out because he hadn’t 
a pair fit to put on for the Horses to Chypie Feast. No, if 
Mr. Lidderdale do want a kitchen, I must surely drive into 
Rosemarket and help him.” 

“You can’t drive Balfour,” her husband objected. 

“But you can drive the three of us, can’t ’ee,” Mrs. Evans 
demanded. 

“And who’s going to look after the bar?” 

“TI can drive ’ee, mum,” said Donald eagerly. “I know 
to drive Balfour.” 

“Donald! What have I told ’ee? You dare say again you 
can drive Balfour, and off to bed you’ll drive that minute. 
You do know well I’ve forbidden ’ee even to touch the 
reins.” 

Mark’s furnishing expedition began to seem impracticable. 

“But how shouldn’t I ask Dolly Masterman to look after 
the bar for a morning?” Mrs. Evans went on. “She’ve done 
it for me before now.” 

The landlord accepted with a grunt this solution. 

“Oh, mum, lev me come too,” Donald begged. 

“Don’t talk so wildly, Donald. You do know well you'll 
be to school.” 

“Well, Miss Vivian wouldn’t mind for once.” 

“Donald!” 

He looked up at her from wide deep blue eyes; but he 
knew her firmness of old, and like his father he surrendered, 
although he knitted his brows crossly and did not accept the 
defeat with his father’s bland indifference. 

Balfour, the six-year-old Evans pony, trotted very fast 
into Rosemarket, a great deal faster than the shaggy old 
pony behind which Mark used to drive twenty years ago 
with his mother and his grandfather. Yet Rosemarket with 
its steep and narrow streets seemed just the same; and when 
once in the course of the shopping Mark lost Mrs. Evans, 


The Parish 15 


the years fell away like a veil from the face of time and 
he found himself gazing up and down the street for his 
mother’s form to emerge from one of the shops. And driv- 
ing back to Nancepean, all the furniture chosen, Mark was 
once more a child looking out as of yore for the double sign- 
post where the great wide road that rolled southward ten 
miles from Rosemarket to Rose Head released an equally 
wide tributary to sweep round the east of the peninsula. 
There they all were, that crowd of strange names—St. Zaver, 
St. Oo, St. Marnack, Trethinnick, Penhallow, Roscarrack, 
Carveth, and Lanbaddern to the left, and straight on Nance- 
pean, Chypie, Lanyon, Goon Major, Goon Minor, Penaluna, 
Polamonter, Nanstalon, Rose Head. In youth Mark had 
been wont to think of those names as the addresses of so 
many tall enchanters, and now if the signpost no longer had 
the power to conjure up the vision of such fantastic per- 
sonalities, the names still possessed in themselves an almost 
terrifying potency. The thought of their changelessness all 
these years was mixed up with the more exhausting thought 
that nothing less catastrophic than another glacial period 
was ever likely to change them again. The wide road would 
go rolling south to Rose Head and rolling south-east to 
Lanbaddern. ... 

Mark was glad when the trap turned off to the right and 
took the lane that led along to Nancepean, where heath- 
browns danced in clouds above the yellowing bracken, and 
red admirals floated expansively along the first flowers of 
the ivy. 

At the top of the village Mark suggested that he should 
get down and make some purchases of food at the shop. 
He noticed that a shadow passed across the face of Mrs. 
Evans, and with an involuntary impulse to propitiate her he 
asked if she would not dismount too and help him to solve 
the problem of what provisions he should buy for the 
Vicarage. 

“Mrs. Pellow will be able to tell you that,” she said coldly. 
“Come along, William John, can’t you see that Balfour is 
jumping to be back in his stable?” 

Mark felt discouraged when he turned aside up the path 


16 The Heavenly Ladder 


bordered by dahlias and sunflowers and entered the buzzful 
drouthy little shop and leaned across the counter waiting 
for Mrs. Pellow to answer the bell which had tinkled sharply 
when the handle of the door was turned. Evidently the idea 
of his shopping here was distasteful to Mrs. Evans. He 
supposed that the two women were enemies, and he sighed 
to think that he had so soon trodden upon the corns of a 
situation. But he must make it clear from the start that 
neither as Vicar of Nancepean nor as his human self was 
he going to be made a catspaw of faction. It had been a 
mistake to seem to be trying to propitiate Mrs. Evans by 
inviting her assistance. It would have given the idea that 
he was as much afraid of her tongue as her son and husband 
were. This jealousy, one of another, must be sublimated. 
All the fervour and passion behind it must be utilized. 
Surely that was possible. It was only a matter of direction. 

Mrs. Pellow came in from the back of the shop and put 
an end to Mark’s meditation. She was a solid woman of 
about thirty, with upslanting eyes set wide like a cat’s and 
full red underlip that drooped Buddha-wise, a woman whose 
likeness a sculptor might have been tempted to hammer 
straight from a block of granite without the docile mediation 
of clay. She had none of a cat’s complacency or grace, but 
her manner had so much of the peculiar feline brusqueness 
that the effect of her personality was on the whole more 
that of a large cat than anything else. Mark had not known 
her as a girl. She had been the daughter of Mrs. Roswarne, 
a widow who had married Joe Dunstan of Polgarth and 
borne him three huge sons who with their father worked 
the windswept farm on the seaward side of Nancepean. 

“T came in to buy a stock of provisions, Mrs. Pellow,” the 
new vicar explained. 

The mistress of the shop laughed heartily at this an- 
nouncement, so infectiously indeed that Mark laughed with 
her, and only realized when he stopped himself that she had 
all the while been laughing quite soundlessly. 

“How’s George?” he asked. “He and I were boys to- 
gether in this village.” Mark wanted to add “and great 
friends,’ but he feared to provoke again that soundless 


The Parish 1G 


mirth, for as a boy he had loathed George Pellow, who had 
been a podgy little sneak, and it seemed to him that Mrs. 
Pellow would be sure to mock at the insincerity of claiming 
friendship with her husband. 

“Aw, George is very well. He’s gardener to Major 
Drumgold’s.” 

“So Mrs. Evans told me,” Mark said. He saw Mrs. 
Pellow’s eyes narrow. A sudden whiff of cooking reached 
the shop from the cottage within and gave him an excuse to 
add hastily: “I’m afraid I’ve called at a bad time. I’m 
afraid you are just in the middle of getting your dinner.” 

“°Tis no matter,’ Mrs. Pellow assured him, and the man- 
ner of her speech was remote and inconsequent as that of a 
person encountered in a dream. Then a fat, pasty-faced 
little girl squeezed herself through the inner door, and, hold- 
ing tightly to her mother’s apron, stared up at Mark from 
eyes of a filmy blue like cabochon sapphires. 

“How old is she?” Mark asked in a desperate endeavour 
to make his possession of the knowledge bridge an abyss 
of shyness. 

“She'll be eight come January month,” said the mother. 

“She’s a big girl for her age,” Mark declared enthusias- 
tically, feeling that if a young pig had entered the shop he 
should have asked the same question and made the same 
comment. “And what’s her name?” he went on. And even 
that might have been asked about a dog. 

“Winnie we do belong to call her, though, of course, she 
were christened Winifred.” 

This positive and unmistakable inclusion of herself in the 
situation caused the fat little girl to roll herself up in her 
mother’s apron. 

“She belongs to be shy with strangers,’ Mrs. Pellow ex- 
plained. “Don’t be so foolish, Winnie. ’Tis the new clergy- 
man come to see us,” 

“We're going to have our Harvest Festival on Sunday 
week,” Mark proclaimed, and hated his weakness for doing 
it with so much parsonic unction. “I hope that you'll help 
us with the decorations, Mrs. Pellow.” 


18 The Heavenly Ladder 


“George always belongs to bring down a cartload of vege- 
tables from Major Drumgold’s.” 

“That’s capital,” Mark said. “Well, I won’t bother you 
now, Mrs. Pellow, but I wish that sometime you’d think 
out the problem of catering for the Vicarage. I’m counting 
on you. I shan’t be moving in for at least another fortnight, 
so there’s plenty of time. Il come along again soon and 
pay a proper visit. What time does George get back from 
his work? I should like to have a chat with him over old 
times.” 

Mark rang himself out of the shop as he had rung himself 
in. Walking slowly down through the village empty and 
golden in the September sunlight, he asked himself why he 
should feel so much shyer of his parochial work here than 
in London. It was perhaps a consciousness of the changes 
he was going to institute in the manner of worshipping 
Almighty God which made him so apologetic, or was it the 
sense of permanence and changelessness up against which 
he found himself? These people were like the names upon 
that signpost, and the strange laughter of Mrs. Pellow was 
like the mockery of nature herself. 

“Why, Ernest!” he exclaimed, to a tall figure who 
emerged at that moment from the glimmering cavern of the 
blacksmith’s shop to wipe the sweat from his face. “You 
don’t recognize me!” 

“T certainly wouldn’t never have known ’ee,”’ Ernest 
Hockin admitted. “Only I were told you was come amongst 
us again.” 

It had been Ernie Hockin who with Joe Dunstan, the 
stepfather of Mrs. Pellow, had brought the news of the 
wreck to the Vicarage on the night that his grandfather was 
drowned. 

“Yes, here I am again,” Mark said, shaking hands. He 
felt a good deal more at ease with the blacksmith than he 
had felt with Mrs. Pellow. This was chiefly because he 
knew that Ernie Hockin was a devoted Wesleyan, whereas 
the Pellows were probably fluctuating worshippers in church, 
likely to be influenced by their opinion of the new vicar and 
without any standard of belief, with nothing indeed except 


The Parish 19 


the promptings of their personal likes and dislikes to guide 
them. Hockin, on the other hand, might consider the new 
vicar the finest fellow in Cornwall and his own minister 
the greatest rascal; but such an opinion would have no effect 
on his religious opinions. He believed like his father and 
grandfather and great-grandfather before him that Wesley 
was the chosen vessel of the Lord, and that the word of 
God did not exist outside a Methodist chapel. 

“T’m sure I wish you well,” Ernie Hockin was saying. 

“And I’m sure you mean that,” Mark replied. 

The best of British puritanism was embodied in the black- 
smith of Nancepean, who might have served Longfellow for 
his ballad. A tall and graceful man with clean-cut features 
and clear unwavering eyes, he had married a farmer’s daugh- 
ter whom Mark remembered as the rosiest and jolliest girl 
in the village. At forty-three he was the father of eight 
children, the eldest of whom was a girl of nineteen, and the 
youngest a boy of three. Mark wished that they were in his 
flock, because with such a nucleus he should have high hopes 
for the future of the Church in Nancepean; although he 
should always have the consolation of knowing that they 
were being brought up as Christians, and that unlike so 
many little Puritans they were being taught to fear God 
more than man. 

“T see you’ve built a new chapel, Ernest,” Mark said, gaz- 
ing down the road at the hideous oblong erected with gloomy 
permanence of elaborately dressed and pointed granite 
blocks. ‘It makes our poor little parish-hall next door look 
very humble. And yet I think I liked better your father’s 
old cottage where you used to hold the prayer-meetings.”’ 

“Aw, ’twere too small altogether!” the blacksmith pro- 
tested. 

“Ts your father still alive?’ Mark inquired. 

“Surely !” 

“He must be very old.” 

“No, no, he’s none so old. He’s no more than seventy- 
nine, I believe.” 

“Tll look in and have a chat with him soon,’ Mark 


20 The Heavenly Ladder 


promised. “No, I don’t think I like your new chapel so 
well as the old cottage.” 

“But you see we’ve grown in numbers since then,” the 
blacksmith said, with a twinkle in his eye. 

“Well, I shall try to keep you from wanting a still bigger 
chapel,” Mark laughed. 

“We shan’t want that for some long time,” the blacksmith 
replied seriously. “We can hold three hundred. But the 
only time I ever saw it full were last election when the 
Liberal candidate gave us an address,” he added. 

“And you have your own minister now,” Mark went on. 

“Ess, ess; when Mr. Dale of Tallack gave the money to 
build it and show forth the glory of the Lord, his son the 
Reverend Cass were made minister.” 

“And Cass is very successful?” Mark asked. He could 
not get used to the idea of his old playmate’s being a figure 
of such importance nowadays, though looking back at the 
boy he had known he felt that he ought to have expected 
quite as much from all that youthful exuberance and self- 
assurance. , 

“Oh, I believe we couldn’t have no better man,” the black- 
smith replied. “Some of the local preachers was a bit 
against him in the beginning, because he didn’t lev them 
preach so much as they’d a mind to. But there’s none of 
we who could preach like the Reverend Cass. Well, we 
haven’t got the learning, you see. And he’s led Nancepean 
well in other ways. The Fishing Company declared a bigger 
dividend last year than was ever declared afore, and ’twere 
him who got a shilling a hogsed more from the Penzance 
buyers than was ever known. And they do think a lot of 
him to Rosemarket. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was 
chosen to stand for Parliament. ‘There’s no man more 
strong against drink. Why, ’twere only last Sunday as he 
did call beer ‘Satan’s honey,’ and there was clapping of 
hands in the House of God, which weren’t as it should be. 
Yet I believe the dear Lord did forgive the word, for it 
were surely well uttered.” 

Mark said that he must be getting back to lunch at the 
Hanover Inn. 





The Parish 21 


“Where I’m staying,” he added. 

“So I heard tell,” said the blacksmith. ‘Well, if I’d my 
way I’d close every inn and hotel and beershop in the land,” 
he affirmed. “But I wouldn’t wish any great harm to Wil- 
liam John Evans, for he’s a decent honest man. But you'll 
be moving down along to the Vicarage soon, I suppose?” 

Mark said he hoped to be settled there within the next 
fortnight. 

“°Tis a wisht old place,” the blacksmith commented. 
“*Twere almost a pity you couldn’t have taken the villa next 
to the Reverend Cass. ’Twould have been less lonely for 
’ee,”’ 

Mark looked at the wedding-cake pinnacles of the two 
new villas and, repressing a temptation to cry ‘God forbid!’ 
he hurried back to the Inn where he found Mrs. Evans in 
what her son called ‘some frizz’ because he was late for his 
lunch. Mark hurriedly explained that he had been talking 
to Ernie Hockin, at which the brow of his hostess cleared. 

“Didn’t ’ee see Mrs. Pellow then?” she asked. 

“Only for a moment. She was busy getting the dinner. 
But Ernie Hockin and I had quite a long chat.” 

“Ernest Hockin isn’t a bad old chap,” William John Evans 
proclaimed. “No man is more fierce against beer, but I 
believe he’s honest. I’ve seen the man refuse a glass of port 
wine when all the rest of they blaring Radicals was swaller- 
ing it down so fast as medicine.” 

“Now, William John, don’t ’ee talk so much, but leave! 
Mr. Lidderdale eat his lunch. That is if it isn’t quite ruined 
by being kept so long.” 

Mark decided to devote the afternoon to calling upon 
Major Drumgold, the secretary of the Lanyon Golf Club. 
His host offered to drive him as far as Church Cove, but he 
would not hear of it. 

“Oh, dear, I wish I could walk with ’ee so far as the 
links,’ Donald sighed. “If you’d only come a bit sooner I 
wouldn’t have had to go to school, because we were having 
holidays.” He looked inquiringly and hopefully at his 
mother, but she merely said: 

“And ’tis time you was gone, Donald.” 


22 The Heavenly Ladder 


When Mark came to the top of the long rise from Nance- 
pean, he turned aside from the road and sat for awhile on 
the sweet short grass of Pendhu cliffs, contemplating the 
peacock sea below and staring away westward beyond its 
earthly reflections to where in celestial glitter it mingled 
with the sky. To his right the scattered cottages of Nance- 
pean might have been bleached shells cast inland upon the 
valley, so small did they appear against the expanse of 
shimmering space in front of him. To his left the line of 
cliffs three hundred and fifty feet high swept round a 
desolate and sombre beach to the dark promontory of 
Pendhu, round the base of which the water even upon the 
calmest days was always troubled. The figure of a man was 
walking from that direction, his silhouette against the sky 
line giving to his movements such an air of loneliness and 
significance that his approach filled Mark with curiosity to 
know his business. He laughed at himself for adopting so 
soon the country point of view which ascribed importance 
to individual behaviour and discovered mystery in every- 
thing and everybody whose meaning and business was not 
immediately apparent. Presently Mark could see that the 
figure was carrying a branch of furze, and what would have 
perplexed a stranger to Cornwall more than ever revealed 
to Mark the newcomer’s occupation. It was the huer, the 
sharp-eyed watcher (or rather the watcher gifted with pe- 
culiar power of vision) who all day long from August to 
October paces the cliffs to give the signal of fish approaching, 
of those schools of pilchards that may put as much as £2,000 
in the pockets of those who live in such seaboard villages 
as Nancepean. The thrill of that old cry of “heva!” rang in 
Mark’s ears from childhood. It used to echo along the 
valleys comparatively far inland, where those who were culti- 
vating the slopes flung down their tools and ran seaward, 
himself hard at their heels and his heart beating against his 
ribs like the wind against the cliffs. In those days his grand- 
father had been president of the Nancepean Fishing Com- 
pany, upholding their rights against Portrose, the next vil- 
lage north, and Lanyon, its neighbour on the south. More 
than once the Lanyon Gulls had tried to claim that the school 


The Parish 23 


had passed the tall white pole just beyond Church Cove that 
marked the division between their waters and those of the 
Nancepean Daws. But his grandfather had upheld his 
parishioners fiercely in every dispute, and there was a legend 
that on the famous occasion when the Portrose boats tried 
to keep the Nancepean boats from shooting the seine Parson 
Trehawke himself and three other stalwarts fought the 
pirates with oars for half a summer’s day and secured the 
safety of the catch. Nowadays the president of the Fishing 
Company was Cass Dale. It might appear to the scoffer a 
trifling matter which was president, the vicar or the minister ; 
but Mark knew that, so long as the office was held by the 
minister, it was the visible sign of the triumph of Chapel 
over Church, and as such not to be tolerated for a moment 
longer than was inevitable. He looked up from his memories 
of the past as he made this resolution for the future and 
found that the lonely watcher on the cliff was his old friend 
Joe Dunstan, the tenant of Polgarth farm and the stepfather 
of Annie Pellow. 

Joe had been a beefy young man of five-and-twenty when 
Mark saw him last; now he was a fleshy middle-aged man 
of five-and-forty with round apple face, and hair and mous- 
tache already quite grey, much older comparatively than 
Ernie Hockin had seemed. 

“Well, Joe, how goes it? No fish yet this year, they tell 
me down along.” 

Joe Dunstan stopped, stared at the stranger who knew his 
name and his business, flung down the branch of furze, and 
held out a hand like a prime rumpsteak. 

“By gosh!” he shouted. “’Tis boy Mark. Or I suppose 
I oughtn’t to call ’ee that now. I knawed ’ee was come back 
to us, but I hadn’t figgered ’ee as rale somehow until now, 
and darn ’ee, Passon Mark, ’twas the old days and the old 
manner of speech as come back with ’ee.” 

They were shaking hands violently while Joe said this, and 
for Mark this meeting was the happiest incident so far of 
his return to Nancepean. 

“T never knew that you were huer, Joe,” he said. 

“Aw, I took on when old man Pascoe give it up. Well, I 


24 The Heavenly Ladder 


were always counted to have the best eyes for the job, and 
with my three boys the farm isn’t looked after too bad. 
But this year . . .” he spat on the ground to show what he 
thought of it. “We haven’t had so much as the sight of a 
fish. Roscarrack have done well. So have Carveth, and 
even to Polamonter they’ve took a £600 catch, but we haven’t 
had ne’er a sight of one.” 

“There’s still time,’ Mark said. 

“Oh, ess, ess, I’ve known so big a catch as any took nigh 
the end of October month. But I reckon Nancepean won't 
do much this year. Last year now we did well, and the year 
before. Well we did! And do ’ee find Nancepean much 
different after so many years?” 

“The children are the greatest difference,” Mark said. At 
which Joe Dunstan roared with laughter. 

“That’s good! Ess, I reckon the children 1s different. 
And there’s a passel of ’em surely. Ess, I believe we’ve not 
done too bad these twenty years.” 

He went off into another shout of laughter, and his frank 
delight in the achievement of Nancepean shone from his 
ruddy round face with as much zest in his own performance 
as some old fertility god’s. 

“T haven’t seen your boys yet.” 

“Well, they’re fine young chaps. But the missus is a fine 
upstanding woman,” Joe said. 

“T’ve seen your stepdaughter, Mrs. Pellow.” 

“And she were a handsome maid. I wasn’t any too 
pleased when she took it into her head to marry George 
Pellow. But there, twas another man made her. But if 
I’d made her myself and she were my own maid, I wouldn’t 
answer for her, not when it come to marrying.” 

Mark talked for a little while longer with Joe Dunstan, 
and after promising to come and visit Polgarth as soon as 
he had time he turned back from the cliffs to the road and 
struck out along the downward slope to Church Cove. 

When he came in sight of his church, he could not resist 
going in for a minute or two to fill his fancy with the pic- 
ture of what it would look like one day. It looked dreary 
enough at present with the crowd of pitch-pine pews, with 


The Parish 25 


the sacristy mouldering and empty and the keyboard of 
the harmonium like a row of decayed teeth, with wood-lice 
disturbed by the lifting of the crazy cover of the font, with 
nothing really to speak to the eye of God’s worship here 
except a fragment of the old rood-screen painted in the most 
primitive style with five saintly forms, none of which was 
recognizable. Mark decided that his first ambition should 
be to replace with a square granite altar that abominable 
gothic whatnot of varnished deal. Would it be too much to 
ask his late vicar to present a stone altar in addition to all 
the rest he was finding for the church? Mark had no doubt 
that Mortemer would be willing, but was it fair to ask him? 
Well, that must be decided a little later on. Meanwhile, he 
must talk to Mrs. Evans about the cleaning of the church. 
Presumably Tom Pascoe, as sexton, was responsible for its 
condition. Mark made up his mind to see that Tom Pascoe 
was given to understand clearly his duties inside the church 
with the alternative of being relieved of them inside and 
out, with which reflection he passed through the south porch 
into the churchyard to observe how far Mrs. Evans’ criti- 
cism of the sexton’s laziness was justified there. Perhaps 
she had been a little severe, Mark thought, when he looked 
at the grass and the neatness of the graves and the glitter- 
ing green fingers of the mesembryanthemums that overhung 
the wall on the south side, the base of which was heaped 
high with seaweed left from the last springing of the tide; 
but no doubt she would reply that this was too soon after 
the season of visitors for Mark to judge. Not having the 
key, he was unable to explore the strange squat tower quite 
separate from the church and apparently planted deep in 
the landward side of the rounded and isolated: green cliff 
known as the Castle that protected the church from the 
direct attack of the sea. Instead, he climbed up the cliff and 
stood on the farther edge to gaze down into the narrow 
cove where his grandfather had been drowned in the at- 
tempted rescue of the crew of the Happy Return twenty 
years ago, where, a century before that, a ship from Portu- 
gal had been smashed to pieces and left her cargo of silver 
dollars to be swallowed up by the sand, and where, before 


26 The Heavenly Ladder 


that a thousand years or more, two princesses of Brittany 
had been the only creatures saved from the wreck of some 
now unimaginable craft, and climbing aslkore here had 
caused the tower and church to be built in gratitude to God 
and his saint Tugdual. 

How fair this spot was upon this golden autumn after- 
noon, how rich the widespread view! Northward the road 
flowed down from Pendhu cliffs like a waterfall to lose it- 
self in the sand of Church Cove, while a steeper road 
tumbled in a cascade from the headland on the farther side 
that hid the long line of the coast heaving southward to Rose 
Head. The tide was far out and displayed a wide stretch 
of wet sand all ribbed and scalloped and fluted by the crafty 
sea. Eastward in billows of turf the towans of Chypie rose 
to a stark horizon, mocking with their conformation the 
ocean below; while between them and the high ground roll- 
ing inland from Pendhu a vivid green valley, the curve of 
which concealed the Vicarage from view, allowed egress to 
a small stream that spread its waters like a silver fan upon 
the beach and babbled of earth to the sea. The landscape 
no longer possessed that supreme and perfect solitude which 
had marked it in the days of his boyhood, owing to the 
transformation since then of the towans into golf-links. 
However, at this distance the few players left over from 
the swarm of August were really not more obnoxious than 
sheep and akin to them in the outward silliness of their 
behaviour. 

Mark climbed down from the Castle to the beach and 
amused himself for ten minutes, as he had often amused 
himself in childhood, by damming the course of one of the 
numerous rivulets into which the stream had broken up to 
join the sea, by doing which the whole pattern of its delta 
was changed as easily as the shifting glass of a kaleidoscope. 
Then he set himself to toil up the sandy cart track that 
mounted the towans and was the only thoroughfare between 
Nancepean and Chypie without making a detour of several 
miles. About half-way he turned to look back at the ever- 
widening view and saw to his disgust that Lanyon Head had 
been defiled by one of those huge hotels that out of the 


The Parish ay 


season look like deserted conservatories. A golf-ball kicked 
up the sand a few yards ahead of Mark, and turning to see 
who had fired the shot he perceived the usual quartet advanc- 
ing, the two players dressed with elaborate comfort, the two 
caddies managing to make themselves seem of no more per- 
sonality in comparison with the two bags of clubs they were 
carrying than snails with their shells. It was Bernard Shaw, 
Mark recalled, who had said that elderly English gentlemen 
acquired golf instead of wisdom. 

“I’m awfully sorry, sir. I’m afraid I nearly drove into 
you,’ said a slim, florid man with aquiline nose and eager 
eyes. He spoke with the excessively polite throatiness with 
which a well-bred English sportsman tries to impress on the 
individual who obstructs the course of a game that nobility 
is obliging in admitting that the least apology is due. 

“Niblick, boy!” the golfer said sharply. ‘“That’s the third 
time in two days I’ve landed in the middle of this con- 
founded road, Drumgold.” 

“Bad luck,” his adversary replied, eyeing with a greedy 
glitter in his glaucous eyes his own ball waiting for a brassy 
on the resilient turf beyond. 

Mark realized that this must be the captain of the Lanyon 
Golf Club to whose abode he was bound, and he thought 
that it would be an excellent way of avoiding what he knew 
would be a boring call if he introduced himself forthwith. 

“Oh, by Jove, I’m delighted to meet you,” said Major 
Drumgold. “Oh, yes, by Jove, that’s all right. We’ve nearly 
finished our game. Let me introduce Mr. Whittington- 
Crowe. Look here, we’ve only three holes to play. You 
know what I mean? Why don’t you stroll up to the club- 
house and wait for us, and then we can all go along and get 
some tea? Oh, bad luck indeed, Crowe!” 

His adversary, probably put off his stroke by having to 
shake hands with a parson immediately on top of being 
bunkered, had just lifted a large spoonful of the road on the 
turf beyond and left his ball buried in the sand like a turtle’s 
egg. Mark had not the heart to complicate the future of 
Mr. Whittington-Crowe’s game by standing there and talk- 
ing. After all, he had come out to call on Major Drumgold 


28 The Heavenly Ladder 


and get it over, so he might as well fall in with his sugges- 
tion. Leaving the golfers, he walked on toward the club- 
house, which to his relief he found empty except for the 
inanimate crowds of sportsmen and sportswomen in the 
illustrated weekly papers. 

A quarter of an hour later Drumgold and Whittington- 
Crowe came in, and, while they brushed their hair and 
washed their hands, fought their battle over again in words. 

“Tf I hadn’t run over at the ninth .. .” 

Bubble—bubble—lather—splash—splosh ! 

“T ought to have been down in three at the four- 
peenthiy cuss, 

Brush—brush—brush—brush ! 

“Why, that drive of yours at the sixteenth was a corker.”’ 

Bubble—babble—babble—bubble—rinse — rinse — rub — 
flap ! 

“Are you a golfer, Mr. Lidderdale?’’ Major Drumgold 
inquired. 

“No, I prefer cricket,” Mark said. 

“Jolly good game too,’ Mr. Whittington-Crowe com- 
mented with approbation, but rather, Mark felt, as if he 
were patting a small child on the head for some precocious 
feat of athletics. 

Major Drumgold’s house, at the head of one of the tribu- 
tary valleys diverging from the wide valley beyond the 
towans that separated the parish of Nancepean from Lan- 
yon, was ten minutes’ walk from the golf pavilion. It had 
originally been a four-roomed cottage, but had been con- 
siderably added to by the Major during the twelve years it 
had been in his possession. The garden, well sheltered from 
the north and east by the slope of the ground, looked as if 
it had been in existence much longer than twelve years. 
Among the members of the Lanyon Golf Club it was re- 
puted to be the most remarkable garden in Great Britain. 
As a matter of fact, it was nothing like so remarkable as 
the Vicarage garden, and, of course, to compare it with the 
really great gardens of Cornwall was ridiculous; but then 
most of the members of the Lanyon Golf Club had only 


The Parish 29 


seen of aided nature besides other golf courses their own 
and their neighbours’ herbaceous borders up country. 

Major Drumgold was a small man with grizzled red hair 
and a close-cut red moustache like a smear of treacle on his 
upper lip. His military bearing made of what would have 
been a noticeable inclination to tubbiness no more than the 
trimness of a small keg of brandy, Mrs. Drumgold, who 
was nearly twice as big as her husband, resembled the wreck 
of an iced madeira cake, with her blond hair, her pink 
powder, and her string of amber beads like candied peel. 

“Care to stroll round the garden?” the Major asked. 
“How long before you’re ready for us, Topsy?” he added to 
his wife. 

“Oh, about twenty minutes,” she replied, in a mincing, 
artificial voice, husky with an elaborately affected fatigue. 

“You wouldn’t like me to stay and give you a hand, 
sweetheart?’ her husband suggested. 

She brushed aside his goodwill like a tiresome fly; and 
the Major set out to show off his flowering shrubs with as 
much pomp of confidence as the verger of a cathedral. 

“We've got no servants at the moment,” he confided in 
Mark. “So I like to give the wife a hand if she wants it.” 

“Do you find the servant problem acute in Cornwall?” 
Mr. Whittington-Crowe inquired. 

“Dreadful! dreadful!” the host exclaimed. ‘We simply 
cannot get girls to stay. They complain of the quietness.” 

Whittington-Crowe nodded sagely. 

“They do that with us even in Surrey.” 

“What I say is, they ought to have lived in barracks all 
their life like me,” said the Major. “They’d be glad to be 
quiet then. By gad, they’d welcome it! You know what 
I mean? They’d revel in it! If I had my way,” he went 
on, digging his stick into the border and thus, as it were, 
piercing the very core of the problem. “If I had my way 
I'd start conscription for domestic service.” 

“Why not be a little more drastic,” Mark suggested, “and 
revive slavery °” 

“Why not?’ the Major demanded. “It would stop a 
deuced lot of nonsense.” 


30 The Heavenly Ladder 


“T don’t think that anything will stop human beings from 
talking nonsense,’ Mark said. “What’s this shrub, Major 
Drumgold ?” 

“That? Oh, that’s a splendid thing. That’s one of the 
finest flowering shrubs ever introduced. That’s—er—what 
is it? Oh lord, I know the name as well as my own. It 
comes from Japan, or is it California? That’s it. Some- 
thing californica. Or is it japonica? Californica—japonica ? 
Japonica—californica? It’s a splendid thing. Lovely yel- 
low blossoms in June. Or are they red? Or white? It’sa 
fine thing. Of course, you couldn’t do that in Surrey, 
Crowe. I’d give you a cutting, if you could. But you 
couldn’t. I wish to goodness I could remember what it’s 
called. If I could remember that, I should remember what 
colour the dam blossoms are. Sorry to swear, Vicar, but I 
do get so jolly annoyed with my memory.” 

“Or if you could remember the colour of the blossoms 
you might remember what it was called,’ Mark suggested. 

“The annoying thing is that I know the name as well as 
my own,” the Major assured his guests. “But you couldn’t 
grow it in Surrey, old chap,’ he added to Crowe. “Ten 
degrees of frost would kill it.” 

‘Well, don’t bother about the name, Major,” said Whit- 
tington-Crowe. ‘“What’s this jolly feller?” 

“That? That’s one of the rarest shrubs in existence. 
That’s—er—that’s—George!”’ 

Mark began to be interested. George Pellow was unlikely 
to be either beautiful or half-hardy; but at least he had a 
name, and he was a parishioner. 

“George!” 

But there was no answer. 

“What an ass I am!” the Major exclaimed. “George has 
gone into Rosemarket to see about some plants I ordered. 
You know, I tell you what it is. If my memory gets much 
worse, I shall have to take up that blessed thing you see 
advertised everywhere. What’s it called? Pullmanism. 
I’m sorry George isn’t here, Vicar. If George had been 
here, he could have shown you the marrows we're keeping 
for the Harvest Festival. We always grow a few special 


The Parish aL 


mammoths to put round the font, and after the Harvest 
Festival we send them to the cottage hospital. I’m sorry to 
say we failed with our pumpkins this year. I’ve always 
grown a few pumpkins specially for the church. The peo- 
ple like to look at them. We had the biggest pumpkin in 
the Rhos at Nancepean last autumn. Size of a balloon! 
Size of a balloon!” 

“And who ate that?’ Mark asked. ‘Not the patients in 
the hospital, I hope.” ; 

“Oh no, of course not. Nobody eats pumpkins except I 
believe Americans. It was taken to the school.” 

“The children ate it?’ Mark exclaimed. 

“Tt was used by Miss Vivian in the Botany class. But 
this year some confounded birds dug up the seeds. Birds 
are the curse of our life here,” the Major affirmed with 
tremendous solemnity. 

Mark hoped that Mrs. Drumgold would not be long over 
the tea. 

“Why are they called the Lanyon Golf Links? Why not 
Chypie? Or even Nancepean?” he asked, to bring the 
conversation nearer to the Major’s capacity. 

“The hotel is nearer to Lanyon,’ Drumgold explained. 
“Very few people from Nancepean play. There’s a jolly 
crowd of schoolmasters who stay with Mrs. Martin at Nan- 
kervis every August. That’s the farm between your vic- 
arage and here.” 

Mark nodded, and reminded the Major that he was not a 
stranger to Nancepean. 

“In that case,” said the little man, “you’ll probably get 
on all right with them. But they’re difficult. By gad, they’re 
deuced difficult, don’t you know. You haven’t got Cornish- 
men in Surrey, Crowe.” 

The Major plunged into a dissertation on the complicated 
nature of the Cornishman, in the course of which he claimed 
that he was probably the only stranger who had ever been 
known to get on with them. 

“Tl tell you what it is, Vicar. They like me. That’s 
the secret of my popularity. I’m popular. They trust me. 
And,” Major Drumgold added, assuming what he evidently 


32 The Heavenly Ladder 


thought was an expression of immense knowingness, but 
which made him look like a fairly intelligent Irish terrier. 
“And I don’t trust them.” 

At tea the servant problem, the quietness of the neigh- 
bourhood, the character of the Cornish people, and the vege- 
table marrows were discussed all over again. Mark took 
his leave as soon as he could. Major Drumgold accompanied 
him to the gate of the short drive. 

“You can count on me,” he assured Mark solemnly. “TI 
wish you’d arrived when the visitors were here. We're a 
jolly crowd, and ‘the collections are quite remarkable in 
August. I hope you'll toddle up and have supper with us 
when you're settled in at the Vicarage. George Pellow— 
capital chap, George Pellow—will give you any cuttings you 
want. You'll usually find me on the links. I’m keen. 
Deuced keen. They talk about the decadence of England. 
By gad, I’d like some of the croakers to see the old boys we 
get down here playing golf like a lot of two-year-olds. I'll 
tell you what, Lidderdale, if you want to begin golf, get my 
missus to give you a few lessons. She'll put you on the 
right track. You know what I mean? You'll begin with 
the right theory of the game. Now that the visitors have 
nearly all gone she’s freer. And we expect to get two new 
girls in next week. Yes, we’ve heard of two girls.” 

Mark decided to walk back by inland ways to Nancepean. 
It was a country of narrow, winding valleys, the slopes of 
which were dark with furze brakes, their bottoms lush green 
moors watered by a maze of small streams. Here and there 
the horizon along the high ground was broken by a grove 
of elms round an isolated farmstead. The rich light of the 
westering sun, which was spread like butter on the landscape, 
seemed to exorcize the terror of place that had so strongly 
affected him upon his return to Cornwall, and not merely to 
obliterate all hostility, but even to impart to the land a posi- 
tive benevolence, so that walking back to Nancepean upon 
this mellow afternoon Mark felt that everything was going 
to turn out much easier than he had thought. 


CHAPTER II 
INSTITUTION AND INDUCTION 


ARK was summoned to Bodmin, there to be instituted 
by the Bishop, in his palace of Lis Escop, into the 
spiritualities of his Cure. Until recently the Bishop had 
been accustomed to perform this ceremony in public imme- 
diately before the Induction by the Archdeacon of the new 
Curate into the temporalities of his benefice; but during 
this year his health had become so bad that he had to spare 
himself as much travelling round his diocese as he could. 
During an episcopate of seventeen years John Prescott 
Meade, the third Bishop of Bodmin, had by his scholarship, 
his nobility, and his saintliness invested his young diocese 
with the dignity of a tradition, ripening it by his own per- 
sonality even as the stones of the new cathedral were being 
mellowed by the moorland air and the soft Cornish rain. 
When Mark met him in his library, he was reminded of 
his visit years ago with Father Rowley to Dr. Crawshay at 
Silchester. The Bishop sat upright in an oak chair, on the 
arms of which his hands, white as alabaster and like ala- 
baster seeming faintly translucent, rested lightly as moths 
and against the high tapestried back of which his face ap- 
peared intagliated upon sardonyx. 

“T am truly grieved, Mr. Lidderdale, that I cannot insti- 
tute you publicly to your cure of souls or assist at your 
induction ; but I have to reserve my strength for duties that 
I cannot perform in the comfort of Lis Escop. Colonel 
Greville, your patron, will be here presently, and I am glad 
to have an opportunity of a few minutes alone with you 
first. Please sit down, and I beg you will excuse my own 
immobility.” 

Mark felt thoroughly awed. It had been the habit in the 

33 


34 The Heavenly Ladder 


ecclesiastical circle of St. Cyprian’s to laugh at the “High 
Churchiness” of Bodmin; but in the presence of the Bishop 
he was aware of a completeness of personality that tran- 
scended personality and became personification. While he 
was listening to him, he fancied that he could hear for the 
first time the authentic voice of the Anglican Church. The 
learned books upon the walls, the titles of which wrote 
themselves simultaneously upon his mind; the grey morning 
air and the Michaelmas daisies in a long line against the 
granite wall of the garden visible from his chair; the solid 
furniture and the sombre carpet; the steel engraving of 
Raphael’s most famous Madonna over the mantelpiece, all 
these combined to evoke a sensation of such ageless being 
that Mark found himself in one of those brief eternities that 
exist like a discontinuous abyss in the continuity of time. It 
was a revelation of absolute reality, and even though it 
might seem like trying to illustrate the sun by the spark of 
a struck flint, Mark dared to think that in such moments 
one actually was granted an intellectual apprehension of 
God the Father Who created the world, because from such 
a revelation of reality one preserved a perdurable memory 
of perfection. | 

“T hear that you lived as a child with your grandfather 
when he was Vicar of Nancepean,” the Bishop was saying. 
“That was before my time. You are fortunate, Mr. Lidder- 
dale. I cannot imagine a greater privilege for a man than 
to return, like you, as a priest to the scenes of his youth. 
Little children are so very near to God, and I should sup- 
pose that you would be greatly comforted in any trials or 
difficulties by the remembered joys of childhood. And you 
will surely have both trials and difficulties, Mr. Lidderdale. 
I fear that the late incumbent of Nancepean allowed his pre- 
occupation with the disappearance of the tribes of Israel to 
affect his parochial work. I hope you have no such bee in 
your biretta, Mr. Lidderdale.” 

“IT hope not, my lord,’ Mark replied, wondering as he 
spoke if the Bishop intended to convey a fatherly warning 
not to be too “extreme.” 


Institution and Induction 35 


‘What are your hobbies, Mr. Lidderdale? You have 
worked mostly in London, have you not?” 

“T really don’t think that I have any hobbies, my lord. 
I’ve never had much time to acquire them.” 

The Bishop talked on for awhile about Mark’s cure of 
souls and made some general observations on the strength 
of Nonconformity in Cornwall. 

“The trouble with the Cornish has always been what I 
might almost call a shallow conservatism. No doubt you 
appreciate that defect of their character. But I have known 
several English priests in my diocese who have allowed 
themselves to be exasperated by it.” 

“T think I realize that nothing can be done except through 
the children,” Mark said. ‘Luckily, Cornish people are so 
devoted to their children that they will even let them wor- 
ship in the way they choose for themselves.” 

“Ts your church well equipped?” the Bishop asked. 

Mark explained that it was bare of everything except 
pitch-pine pews and that his late Vicar was generously giv- 
ing him all that he required. 

“That was Mr. Mortemer of St. Cyprian’s, South Ken- 
sington ?” 

Mark nodded. 

“IT hope he won’t be too generous, Mr. Lidderdale. I 
understand, of course, that you will want to make many 
changes in the conduct of the services; but I beg you—no, 
I won’t beg you to do or not to do anything. I will leave 
it all to your own good sense and your desire to serve 
Almighty God.” 

Soon after this, Colonel Greville, the patron of the living, 
was announced. The Colonel was exactly like his name 
and his rank and his position. He was affable to Mark, 
whose acceptance of the living of Nancepean had relieved 
him of writing letters, for which he was grateful. More- 
over, he was pleasantly conscious that the new incumbent 
had not worried him by alluding to the smallness of the 
income. Colonel Greville had not supposed that he should 
find a priest who would accept, without alluding to the 
anomaly, thirty pounds a year less than he paid his valet. 


36 The Heavenly Ladder 


Finally, an invitation to shoot the coverts of a friend had 
compensated him for the trouble of making the railway 
journey from the far east of the Duchy to present his Vicar 
to be instituted. The Chaplain came in with the necessary 
documents, and Mark knelt before the Bishop holding the 
seal of the document that conferred upon him the spirituali- 
ties of Nancepean. 

Colonel Greville coughed, blew out his cheeks, and said 
with a reminiscence of the barrack square: 

“Reverend Father in God, I present unto thee Mark Lid- 
derdale to be instituted to the—er—Vicarage of Nancepean.” 

“Let the Declarations and Oaths be made, subscribed, and 
taken according to Law,” the Bishop said, on which Mark 
declared as follows: 


“T, Mark Lidderdale, Clerk, do solemnly make the 
following declaration: 

“TI assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and 
to the Book of Common Prayer and of the ordering of 
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. I believe the doctrine of 
the Church of England as therein set forth to be agreeable 
to the Word of God; and in Public Prayer and Admin- 
istration of the Sacraments I will use the form in the 
said book prescribed, and none other, except so far as 
shall be ordered by lawful authority. 

“T, Mark Lidderdale, hereby solemnly and sincerely de- 
clare in reference to the presentation made of me to the 
Vicarage of Nancepean as follows: 

“T have not received the presentation of the said Vicar- 
age of Nancepean in consideration of any sum of money, 
reward, gift, profit, or benefit directly or indirectly given 
or promised by me, or by any person to my knowledge 
or with my consent, to any person whatsoever, and I will 
not at any time hereafter perform or satisfy any payment, 
contract, er promise made in respect of that presentation 
by any person without my knowledge or consent. 

“I have not entered, nor, to the best of my knowledge 
and believe, has any person entered, into any bond, cove- 
nant, or other assurance or engagement, otherwise than 


Institution and Induction 37 


as allowed by sections one and two of the Clergy Resigna- 
tion Bonds Act, 1828, that I should at any time resign 
the said Vicarage. 

“T have not myself, nor, to my knowledge, has any 
person on my behalf, for any sum of money, reward, gift, 
profit, or advantage, or for or by means of any promise, 
agreement, grant, bond, covenant, or other assurance of or 
for any sum of money, reward, gift, profit, or benefit 
whatsoever, directly or indirectly procured the now exist- 
ing avoidance of the said Vicarage. 

“T have not with respect to the said presentation been 

_ party or privy to any agreement which is invalid under 
section one, sub-section three, of the Benefices Act, 1808. 

“I, Mark Lidderdale, do swear that I will be faithful 
and bear true allegiance to his Majesty King George the 
Fifth, his heirs and successors, according to law. 

“So help me God. 

“T, Mark Lidderdale, do swear that I will pay all lawful 
and canonical obedience to the Bishop of Bodmin, and his 
successors for the time being. 

“So help me God.” 


Various prayers, versicles, and responses followed. 
Finally the Bishop, Mark kneeling before him, read a part 
of the legal instrument and added: 


“Receive the cure of souls which is both thine and mine. 
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost. Amen.” 


And Mark, bowing lower, felt the hand of the Bishop 
flutter down upon his head like a blown leaf. 

Mark was now in possession of the spiritualities of his 
benefice, but he would have to wait until next week before 
he was inducted into the temporalities by the Reverend 
Clement Wheatley Ashbottom, Vicar of St. Marnack and 
Rural Dean of the Rhos. He did not have another oppor- 
tunity of talking to the Bishop alone, and soon after lunch he 
set out to the station accompanied for a part of his way by 


38 The Heavenly Ladder 


the Canon Missioner of the diocese. Canon Tyacke was a 
tall, gaunt figure of a man, with a long iron-grey beard that 
matched the grey streets of Bodmin through which they 
were walking. 

“The problem of the Rhos,’ he proclaimed in a hollow 
voice, “is its isolation from the mainstream of diocesan life. 
I have only once been able to preach even in Rosemarket, 
and I regret to say that I am completely and most lamentably 
ignorant of the remote parishes in the peninsula itself.” 

Mark felt while he listened to Canon Tyacke that he was 
about to take up work in a missionary outpost of the Pacific. 

“You will have a long, hard battle with Dissent,’ the 
Canon went on. “Yes, I wish with all my heart that I could 
find time to lead a great campaign on the frontiers of the 
diocese. But...” the Canon Missioner stopped and indi- 
cated solemnly with his umbrella the turning Mark should 
take to reach the railway station: 

“Tt is exactly twenty-one minutes to three. You will just 
catch your train.” 

He passed on down the street, moving with a ghostly 
portentousness of gait that tried to express the amount of 
spiritual business he had on hand and the impossibility of 
finding time to bring the stray sheep of the Rhos into the 
Anglican fold. 

On the Sunday after his institution Mark walked up to 
Chypie to hear Mass, and was invited into breakfast by 
Kennedy the Vicar, a jovial pink cherubic creature with a 
pretty wife and three little boys like cupids, who with Mark 
made up the congregation. 

Kennedy did not appear to be at all worried by its 
smallness. 

“They never come to early Mass,” he assured his visitor 
with a rich chuckle. “And they never stay on for the mid- 
day Mass. I get a certain number for Morning Prayer and 
about the same for Evening Prayer. But they like the 
chapels better, Lidderdale. I had a mission during my first 
Lent in Chypie. You know the sort of thing. Two priests 
looking like strips of cheese-rind. . . .” 

“Oh, Arthur, how can you talk like that?” Mrs. Kennedy 


Institution and Induction 39 


exclaimed, holding the teapot suspended to mark her affec- 
tionate disapproval. 

“Daddy doesn’t look like cheese-rind,” said the eldest 
boy. ‘He looks like a Dutch cheese.” 

“Oh, yes, doesn’t he?” echoed the second brother. “Like 
that Dutch cheese we wolled up and down the kitchen table, 
Simon, when Mawy was so cwoss.” 

Both boys gurgled ecstatically, while the youngest, who 
was about four, went on stolidly and solemnly eating his 
porridge. 

There was a short interval while the Vicar of Chypie 
tickled his two elder sons in spite of their mother’s protest 
against behaviour at breakfast that was bound to give them 
acute indigestion. 

“Well, as I was saying,” Kennedy resumed when he was 
back in his own place. “I got these two missioners to give 
it ’em hot and strong, and after a fortnight we had the 
church packed. It looked like a genuine revival, and the 
ministers were as sick as Satan at our success. But when 
the missioners left, the converts left with them. Ha—ha 
—ha!” 

The Vicar of Chypie tilted back in his chair and shook 
with laughter. 

“What about the children?” Mark inquired. 

“Splendid attendance during December,” Kennedy replied. 
“Tt gets better and better right through Advent. But when 
the Christmas tree is bare there’s a rush to the chapel, where 
they celebrate the New Year in more style than we do. 
Ha—ha—ha! Ho—ho—ho!” 

“My husband laughs at everything,” Mrs. Kennedy put 
in apologetically. 

“Daddy’s always laughing,” added Simon, the eldest boy. 
“That’s why he’s so frightfully fat.” 

The meal came to an end in a wild chase round the room 
to the accompaniment of excited screams and joyous clap- 
ping of hands. 

After breakfast, the weather having gone back to Oc- 
tober’s rain-washed blue and white, the two priests paced 
the Vicarage lawn, in the middle of which a large Benthamia 


40 The Heavenly Ladder 


spread its branches hung with fruit like large crimson straw- 
berries, a curiously appropriate ruler for the garden of this 
chubby pink priest. , 

“Well, ’'m game for a strong forward policy,” Kennedy 
declared. ‘But we shan’t get any help from the rest of our 
brethren. All the clergymen in the Rhos are fossils, my 
dear fellow. Worse! They’re dusty fossils. They’re a 
byword in the diocese. However, they won’t actually oppose 
us. They’ll look very fierce, but they won’t move. You 
know, like pterodactyls in the chalk. We’ll have a bunch of 
them at your Induction on Thursday. I say, I wish you’d 
stay and preach for me this morning.” 

But Mark explained that, although he was not holding a 
service in Nancepean Church, he was going to say Morning 
and Evening Prayer without sermons in the little parish-hall. 

“What a pity!” said the Vicar of Chypie, and, bubbling 
over with laughter, he walked as far as the end of the drive 
to speed his guest on the way. 

The clergy were more strongly represented than the laity 
at Mark’s Induction. They came from the remotest parishes 
of the Rhos, some riding on bicycles, some driving with 
beaded and bonneted wives in those governess cars that were 
known locally as jingles. Perhaps it was the last word that 
put Pickwick into Mark’s head and made him whisper to 
Kennedy that Ramsey of St. Zaver, who was wearing black 
leggings half-way up his thighs, looked exactly as Mr. 
Nathaniel Winkle might have looked in mourning ; at which, 
needless to say, Kennedy emitted a loud guffaw and pro- 
voked an indignant hush from the Reverend Clement Wheat- 
ley Ashbottom, Vicar of St. Marnack and Rural Dean of 
the Rhos. 

“The biggest collection of freaks in England,” he whis- 
pered to Mark, not in the least abashed by the stern glasses 
of the Rural Dean flashing upon him from the other end of 
the sacristy. “I hope to goodness my kids don’t create a 
scandal. They insisted on coming with my wife. Look 
out, here comes old Ashbottom. You can hear his false 
teeth clicking from here.” 

The Vicar of St. Marnack, munching the air according 


Institution and Induction AI 


to his wont, advanced. He was of the saurian type, with a 
leathery skin and heavy-lidded dull eyes behind his glasses, 
which last against the dimness and grubbiness of the rest 
of him looked unnaturally polished. In the year of grace 
1868 he had written a book to prove by the most abstruse 
calculations of Biblical chronology, that Adam was actually 
created on September 23rd, 4004 B.c., at six o’clock in the 
morning, thereby disposing at once of the ecclesiastical tra- 
dition that he was created on March 23rd, and of Dr. John 
Lightfoot’s theory that he was created on October 23rd, 
4004 B.c., at nine o’clock in the morning. In the year of 
grace 1912 he had not changed his opinion by a minute. 

“T understand that the patron will not be present at the 
Induction, Mr. Lidderdale,” he said. ‘In that case we shall 
proceed with the churchwardens.” 

“But there’s only one churchwarden,” Mark replied, look- 
ing round for William John Evans. 

“Only one churchwarden?” the Rural Dean gasped. “But 
that is very irregular.” 

“The vicar’s warden died early this year,’ Mark ex- 
plained, “and my predecessor did not appoint anybody to 
take his place.” 

“Then where is the other? Dear me, I suppose I am in 
order in continuing the Induction? The Archdeacon said 
nothing to me about any deficiency. It’s most perplexing.” 

Mark left the sacristy to find William John, who was sit- 
ting with his wife in the body of the church. 

“But darn ’ee,” William John protested in a gruff and 
horrified whisper. “I surely can’t go marching round the 
church with all they clergymen.” 

“You'll do what the Vicar tells ’ee, William John,” his 
wife commanded sharply. “Go along, you great foolish 
man, and don’t show so hot and awkward. A pretty church- 
warden you do look, and Miss Lambourne staring at ’ee and 
making herself out so haughty, as she always do belong.” 

Miss Lambourne was the sister of Job Lambourne of 
Carwithen, who had returned from nursing to keep house 
for her farmer brother, and was considered by everybody 


42 The Heavenly Ladder 


in Nancepean to allow herself too many of the airs of a 
lady. 

“Go on, Ba,” his son urged; and William John Evans, his 
face a sunset, shambled unwillingly up the aisle behind his 
Vicar. 

“Your churchwarden looks like a wrecked mariner sur- 
rounded by cannibals,’’ Kennedy whispered to Mark in the 
sacristy crowded with black forms. 

The procession formed up. The clergy marched into the 
choir stalls, while the Rural Dean mounted the pulpit and 
proclaimed : 

“Dearly beloved in the Lord: in the name of God, and in 
the presence of his people, we are about to admit into this 
benefice our well-beloved brother in Christ, Mark Lidder- 
dale, who has already been duly and canonically instituted 
as your Parish Priest by the Right Reverend Father in God, 
our Bishop in this diocese of Bodmin. Your Vicar had 
already received at his Ordination the gift of the Holy Ghost 
to enable him for the office and work of a priest, and he 
has made the solemn promises required; and at his Insti- 
tution the Bishop has given him authority to exercise his 
spiritual duties towards you in this parish. And, forasmuch 
as the charge of immortal souls purchased by our blessed 
Lord and Saviour with His most precious blood is so solemn 
and weighty a thing, and because the good success of his 
ministry among you will depend under God upon the mutual 
love, and kindness, and forbearance of the pastor and his 
flock, I beseech you to join together as at other times, so 
now especially in hearty prayer and supplication to Almighty 
God, that of His mercy and grace He will send His Bless- 
ing upon this your Parish Priest, and upon all committed 
to his care.” 

After this the Rural Dean descended from the pulpit to 
be conducted by William John Evans to the church door, 
followed by Mark and a trail of clergy. 

Here the Rural Dean flourished the Mandate of Induc- 
tion, and placing Mark’s hand on the key of the door, he 
said : 

“By virtue of this mandate I do induct thee into the real, 


Institution and Induction 43 


actual, and corporeal possession of the Vicarage and Parish 
Church of Nancepean, with all the rights, members, and 
appurtenances thereunto belonging. 

“The Lord preserve thy going out and thy coming in from 
this time forth for evermore.” 

In order for Mark to be given the rope of the bell that 
he might toll it and thereby signify to the parishioners that 
he was taking possession, everybody had to go outside, cross 
the churchyard, and enter the isolated tower; and the wind, 
which was blowing with some strength from the south, 
made the surpliced clergy bob about like a string of washing 
on a line. 

Mark tolled vigorously, after which he and William John 
conducted the Rural Dean to the font, where he vowed to 
pay attention to Baptism and Confirmation. From the font 
they wandered to the chancel, where Mark vowed to say his 
prayers diligently. From the chancel they roamed to the 
lectern, where Mark vowed to read God’s Holy Word. 
From the lectern they made a rush for the pulpit, where 
Mark vowed to preach God’s Holy Word. Finally from 
the pulpit they moved to the altar, where Mark vowed to 
celebrate Holy Communion frequently and devoutly. 

More prayers followed and a hymn, during which William 
John asked if he might not go back to his seat and take 
round the collection bag. Mark nodded, and the church- 
warden, wiping the sweat from his brow, descended the 
chancel steps like one who has escaped from the middle of 
a riot. 

“It’s astounding, isn’t it?’ Kennedy chuckled to Mark, 
when they were all back in the sacristy disrobing, “that 
when the safe party concocts a service additional to the 
Book of Common Prayer, however safe it may be doc- 
trinally, it is always extremely insecure from every other 
point of view. I felt while we were wandering about in that 
aimless C. of E. way as if we were all playing a game of 
the rules of which nobody was quite sure. I kept expecting 
old Ashbottom to hold up his hand and shout ‘Forfeit!’ 
You ought to have touched the lectern next.” 

Mark, with what might be described as Mrs. Evans’ con- 


Ad The Heavenly Ladder 


nivance, had invited all the clergy and their wives to take 
tea with him at the Hanover Inn, together with the par- 
ishioners who had assisted at the Induction. The latter 
were not numerous. Besides the Evans family there was 
Annie Pellow and her little girl Winnie, Miss Lambourne of 
Carwithen, on whom Mark had not yet called, and who was 
in consequence politely reproachful, and Tom Pascoe, the 
sexton, whose duties included playing the harmonium, for 
which he was paid an addition of five pounds a year to his 
salary as sexton. It would not be too violent a simile to 
say that Tom Pascoe resembled a hooded cobra with his 
arched back, his thin wavering legs, his flat colubrine head, 
and his habit of continually moistening his lips with his 
tongue. Major Drumgold had interrupted a game of golf 
to attend the Induction; but as soon as the ceremony was — 
over he hurried out to rejoin Mr. Whittington-Crowe, who 
was putting, solitary and disconsolate, on the thirteenth 
green, which was just outside the churchyard gate. Mrs. 
Drumgold, he explained, was still without servants, and 
therefore had to her great regret been unable to accompany 
him. 

Kennedy roared with delighted laughter when he saw the 
black-coated train toiling up Pendhu Hill, some pushing 
their bicycles, some leading the ponies in the jingles, and 
followed by a herd of cows that was being driven back from 
the valley pastures to Pentine farm on the summit of the 
hill. 

“And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to 
Succoth,” he quoted, “about six hundred thousand that were 
on foot, and many children. And a mixed multitude went 
up also with them, and flocks and herds, even very much 
cattle.’ 

“Tell me who they all are and where they come from,” 
Mark said. 

“Well, you know old Ashbottom.” 

“Yes,” Mark agreed. “I think he’s fixed in my mind for 
ever after this afternoon.” | 

“Who’s the funny little man with a sandy beard?” 

“That’s Goodchild of Polamonter, the next parish along 


Institution and Induction 45 


the coast east of Rose Head. He tries to give an impression 
of fierceness, but he is really intensely mild and timid. He 
has secret yearnings to raise, as he calls it, the standard of 
services, whatever that may mean.” 

“Who’s the dumpy little man walking beside him?” 

“That’s Tregeare of Lanbaddern. Funny old pussy cat 
with masses of money and a fine church on which he spends 
immense sums annually.” 

At the top of Pendhu Hill the procession clustered in a 
black bunch round Mark, who felt like Moses when he 
pointed to the scattered white cottages of Nancepean a mile 
away in the valley and encouraged them by indicating the 
oasis of the Hanover Inn, a good half-mile nearer. 

On the way down Mark found himself walking beside 
Miss Lambourne. 

“T’m sorry,” she said, “that you haven’t yet been able to 
spare the time to visit us at Carwithen. My brother Job is 
very busy on the farm, or he would have accompanied me 
to the service this afternoon.” 

Mark looked round at the neat spinster of anywhere 
between forty and fifty in her neat tailor-made tweeds and 
stole of grey squirrel. It surprised him to detect under- 
neath her “ladylike” manner of speech a resentment to which 
Mrs. Evans might have given a more direct expression in 
dialect, but which would not for that reason have been any 
more sharply felt. He was glad, however, to be forewarned 
like this of her character. Had he met her before that 
jealousy had been aroused, he might have been tempted by 
the outward signs of intelligence and “superiority” to confide 
in her too indiscreetly his opinion of other parishioners and 
his plans for the future. 

“Come, Miss Lambourne,” he said, “you mustn’t be too 
severe. I’ve scarcely had time to look round me yet.” 

“Of course, I realize that Mrs. Evans would do her best 
to make you comfortable, but we should have been only too 
glad to look after you at Carwithen until you were settled 
in at the Vicarage.” 

“Mrs. Evans has been kindness itself,’ Mark declared 
enthusiastically. 


46 The Heavenly Ladder 


Miss Lambourne pursed her lips and said dryly that she 
was so glad to hear it. 

“You’re coming to tea at the Inn?” Mark asked. 

“Oh no, thank you very much, Mr. Lidderdale, but I 
must hurry back home. My brother will be expecting me 
back to get him his tea. I do hope that we shall have the 
pleasure of seeing you one afternoon at Carwithen.” 

“Oh, but do come in and help me entertain all these 
clergymen,’ Mark begged. 

“No, indeed, it is very kind of you,’ Miss Lambourne 
replied, “but I must really be getting home. I take this path 
here. Carwithen: lies just beyond over the brow of the hill. 
You won’t forget to pay us a visit? Good afternoon, Mr. 
Lidderdale.” 

She turned aside and walked with dignity on the narrow 
grass path that ran along a stone wall dividing two great 
fields of stubble. 

“Tsn’t Miss Lambourne coming in to tea, then?’ William 
John Evans asked. 

“Don’t ask such foolish questions,” his wife snapped. 
“You do know, William John, that Miss Lambourne would 
die in the road rather than take a cup of tay with we.” 

“The woman do know she’d be welcome,” William John 
replied. 

Mrs. Evans tossed back her head. 

“She do know most things. Some do say she do know 
too much,” 

“You're coming in to tea, Mrs. Pellow?” Mark asked, 
hoping thereby to put back the catch of the conversation to 
safe, and prevent its going off. 

“Oh, my dear life, no indeed,” Mrs. Pellow exclaimed, 
blushing deeply at this challenge, for she liked to slip away 
unnoticed from any gathering that made demands upon her 
sociability, or involved her animal shyness and _ self-con- 
sciousness in the toils of ceremony. “Come now, Winnie, 
we must be getting down along so quick as we can. Good 
afternoon, Mrs. Evans. Good afternoon, Mr. Lidderdale. 
Come, Winnie, move yourself. The maid is so fat, she do 
drag anyone’s arms from their sockets.” 


Institution and Induction A7 


Mrs. Pellow hurried on, Winifred bumping along beside 
her like a rubber ball. 

“Tis true the woman has the shop to think of,” William 
John admitted. 

“She can leave it to look after itself when she’ve a mind 
to,’ Mrs. Evans replied acidly. 

So it fell out that the only parishioners present at the tea 

were the hosts, for even Tom Pascoe had slipped away 
unnoticed in the wake of Major Drumgold. It was not 
quite the way Mark had prefigured his first public appear- 
ance in Nancepean, but he told himself that one could not 
expect a large gathering on a week-day afternoon. Much 
would depend on the impression he made next Sunday at 
the Harvest Festival. He resigned himself to the entertain- 
ment of his fellow clergy. 
_ Mrs. Evans presided over the tea with the help of Dolly 
Masterman, a fresh-complexioned, pretty young woman, the 
daughter of a former coastguard who had settled down in 
Nancepean when his pension was due. It was a real Cornish 
tea, and that is the best in all the world, with scalded cream 
and saffron cakes and honey and jam, and meat pasties to 
support the clergy during the miles between Nancepean and 
home. 

“IT hope you'll soon be able to come over and pay me a 
visit at Lanbaddern,” said Mr. Tregeare in a voice that 
exactly resembled an actor’s idea of a curate. “I think I 
may claim that I have made my church one of the most 
beautiful in England. We proceed with the greatest care 
and circumspection. I do not allow a stone to be moved 
without consulting my architect. I shall be glad to offer 
you lunch, Mr. Lidderdale, whenever you come over. Do 
you not feel a tremendous draught from that door? If 
you'll excuse me, I think I'll go and fetch my muffler. Oh, 
how do you do, Mrs. Kennedy? Do you know that you’re 
sitting right in the draught? Do let me move your chair 
further round.” 

“Mr. Tregeare is a great lady’s man,” said Kennedy 
boisterously. 

The Vicar of Lanbaddern tittered like a schoolgirl. 


48 The Heavenly Ladder 


“Oh, what dreadful things your husband does say, Mrs. 
Kennedy! Have you had any grapes in your garden, Mrs. 
Kennedy? We expect to cut over six hundred bunches this 
year at Lanbaddern. Keigwin, my gardener, has been sell- 
ing them most successfully in Rosemarket.” 

“The old miser takes care not to lose a grape,” Kennedy 
whispered to Mark. “And he’s only got a private income 
of four thousand a year, and no dependants except a parrot. 
How’s your bird, Tregeare?’”’ he asked aloud. 

“Oh, Polly’s very well, thank you, Kennedy. She learnt 
a new word last week.” 

“Not a swear word, I hope.” 

“Of course not, Kennedy. She could not hear any swear 
words at Lanbaddern. Keigwin is always most careful. 
What a suggestion! No, she learnt to say ‘Kiss poor Polly!’ 
The new word was ‘kiss.’ She has been able to say ‘Poor 
Polly for several years now.” 

“She’s getting quite a desperate old maid,’ Kennedy 
laughed. 

“What is that, Kennedy?” the Rural Dean inquired, ad- 
vancing pompously and, as always, munching the air. Ken- 
nedy pretended not to hear, and with an ease remarkable in 
so fat a man lost himself in the black throng. Nor did Mr. 
Tregeare pay any attention to Mr. Ashbottom, because Mr. 
Tregeare liked to be gallant with pretty women, and Mrs. 
Ashbottom was not pretty. 

“T believe you have not yet met Mrs. Ashbottom, Mr. 
Lidderdale,” the Rural Dean said to Mark. She was a 
small ferret-faced woman with a nose as sharp and red as 
a pod of chilli. In talking to her Mark felt as if he were 
stroking a small but dangerous pet. The conversation was 
not interesting, being mostly about the earliness of the 
potatoes at St. Marnack, the obstinacy of the natives in the 
Rhos, and the fullness of Rosemarket on Saturdays. It 
was mercifully interrupted by Goodchild of Polamonter, 
who stuck his sandy beard in Mark’s face and hoped gruffly 
that he was a good walker. 

“Exercise! And plenty of it!’ he barked. “That’s the 
secret! My eldest girl and I walked the whole seven miles 


Institution and Induction 49 


from Polamonter. We shall get a lift half of the way back, 
but we shall have done our eleven miles by supper time. 
Dorothy, where are you? We gave you a good Induction, 
eh, Lidderdale? Dorothy! You'll find us a simple lot after 
your town clergy. Dorothy! Where is that girl of mine?” 

Dorothy, the freckles standing out upon her blushful 
cheeks like the seeds upon a strawberry, struggled through 
the black crowd to her father’s side. 

“You needn’t keep on shouting,’ she murmured resent- 
fully. ‘Everybody began to look at me.” 

“She’s a big ’un for thirteen, eh, Lidderdale?” 

“Oh, shut up, father!’ 

“We shouldn’t have dared answer our fathers like that,” 
Goodchild exclaimed fondly. ‘All right, my dear, get your 
coat on. I shall be ready in amoment. Just a word, Lidder- 
dale,” he added, in a lower voice. “Go slow in Nancepean. 
Don’t make too many changes at first. You know the 
proverb, the more haste the less speed. Ah, that’s true in- 
deed of Cornwall. Well, we rallied round you well to-day. 
Up at Bodmin they laugh at us down here in the Rhos. But 
you'll find that for steady unassuming parochial work we 
can hold our own.” 

Mark looked at the phalanx of peninsular clergy, and 
wondered if he should gradually become absorbed in their 
ranks, or if like Kennedy he should be able with a laugh to 
regard them from outside. But then Kennedy had a wife 
with a sense of humour and three jolly boys. Thus en- 
dowed he could preserve his relation to the larger world in 
just proportion. A fleeting dread ‘passed across Mark’s 
imagination of the future. Were all these clergymen eccen- 
tric because they lived in this isolated corner of England, or 
were they content to live here because they were eccentric ? 

When Mark stood in the roadway outside the Hanover 
Inn to bid them all farewell and watched them depart like 
so many rooks, he remembered the names on those sign- 
posts: St. Zaver, St. Oo, St. Marnack, Penhallow, Trethin- 
nick, Roscarrack, Carveth, and Lanbaddern to the left, and 
straight on Nancepean, Chypie, Lanyon, Goon Major, Goon 
Minor, Penaluna, Polamonter, Nanstalon, Rose Head. 


50 The Heavenly Ladder 


Back in the inn, Mark thanked Mrs. Evans for all her 
kindness and hospitality. 

“Ess, I believe they ate well,” she said proudly and aloofly. 

“Well, I believe,’ her husband echoed. 

“If you was doing your job as you ought to have been 


doing it, William John, you wouldn’t know if they did eat 
well or ill.” 


CHAPTER III 
HARVEST HOME 


T. TUGDUAL’S CHURCH had never been so richly 

decorated for its Harvest Festival since Archdeacon 
Denison invented the cultus of St. Pumpkin. Mrs. Evans 
had made herself responsible for the nave, Miss Lambourne 
for the chancel, Mrs. Pellow for the font. Mark did not 
know which deserved the palm for profuse hideousness. 
The congregation did not know which to admire most. Per- 
haps the font won the two extreme tributes of disgust and 
admiration. The base was surrounded by twenty-four veg- 
etable-marrows in attitudes of adoration, above which dusty 
plumes of pampas-grass concealed the rude stone. A 
machicolation of Duchess pears ran round the rim, while 
inside more vegetable-marrows still in attitudes of adoration 
offered to Almighty God a large pumpkin crowned with a 
head-dress of black grapes. George Pellow, owing to the 
failure of Major Drumgold’s pumpkin crop, had been com- 
pelled to borrow this dropsical gourd from the gardener who 
had grown it for the harvest festival at Lanyon. Geraniums, 
wheat, and belladonna lilies provided the decorative scheme 
for the nave; but the embrasures of the windows were 
heaped with picotee dahlias, and festoons of scarlet-runner 
beans made a bower of the roof. The chancel was a feather- 
bed of white chrysanthemums, and the pulpit was a cornu- 
copia overflowing with cabbages, onions, tomatoes, apples, 
pears, grapes, Michaelmas daisies, sunflowers, dahlias, and 
roses. 

The congregation was, as Mrs. Evans had prophesied, 
large. The prospect of passing an opinion upon the new 
Vicar coupled with the feast of fruit, flowers, and vegetables, 
had attracted nearly the whole parish. There were Mr. and 


5I 


U. OF ILL, LIBS 


52 The Heavenly Ladder 


Mrs. Henry Martin of Nankervis with their three children, 
Mr. and Mrs. Fred Stithian of Pentine with their three 
children and Maud Airey their maid, black Isaac Jago of 
Roscorla with Mrs. Clemmow his housekeeper, Joe Dunstan 
of Polgarth, large Mrs. Dunstan and their three brawny sons 
John Joseph, Harry, and Bob. Old Samuel Dale of Tallack 
did not come, for Mark had warned his son that he did not 
intend to close the church on the following Sunday to give 
his flock an opportunity of browsing on the fruits, flowers, 
and vegetables of the Harvest Festival in the chapel; but, 
curiosity being strong in his son and himself, old Sam Dale 
had sent Woods, his carter, to represent him and report. 
Miss Lambourne had brought her brother, long Job Lam- 
bourne of Carwithen, and, of course, the Pellow and the 
Evans families were both present. Ernie Hockin, the black- 
smith, neither came himself nor allowed any of his family 
to come. He and they provided the better part of the 
Reverend Casimir Dale’s congregation that morning. Old 
Masterman and his pretty daughter Dolly were in church. 
So were the Scobells, who lived in Tintagel, the other wed- 
ding-cake villa next to the Casimir Dales, and with them 
was Miss Horton, their lodger, a lady painter. Mrs. Wilton, 
the coastguard’s wife, was there with two little daughters. 
So was the whole Tangye family, orange-headed father, 
flaxen-haired mother, and seven orange-headed or flaxen- 
haired children. Even Major Drumgold came, and not 
merely Major Drumgold, but Mrs. Drumgold and Mr. 
Whittington-Crowe. 

“There’s the better of seventy men, women, and children,” 
William John Evans told Mark in the sacristy. “I’m beg- 
gared if I can call to mind such a congregation in all the 
days I’ve been to Nancepean. I wouldn’t say as we shan’t 
get over fifteen shillings in the plate.” He began to calcu- 
late. “Miss Lambourne half-a-crown, Major half-a-crown. 
Darn’ee,” he exclaimed with rising excitement, “I wouldn’t 
say aS we won’t get over a pound. No such sum was ever 
known to Nancepean Church unless ’twere in the middle of 
August and the place packed with visitors who’d money to 
throw away.” 


Harvest Home 53 


The vestments, furniture, and sacred vessels presented by 
Drogo Mortemer had all arrived in time for Mark’s first 
Mass in Nancepean Church, and he had already found time 
to teach Donald Evans how to serve him. There was as yet 
no choir, or at any rate nothing more than a tendency on the 
part of Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Pellow to sit in view of Tom 
Pascoe at the harmonium and shrill forth the hymns chosen 
by themselves after Miss Lambourne had been invited to 
contribute a choice and always declined with excessive po- 
liteness. Mark had not liked to deprive Nancepean of any 
opportunity to show off the voice, and since it was impos- 
sible until some kind of choir had been got together and 
Tom Pascoe had had time to study the music to have a 
sung Mass, he had made no attempt to abolish the singing 
of Morning Prayer, which was conducted very much as it 
had been conducted by his predecessor except that it began 
at half-past ten instead of eleven o’clock, and that when it 
was over Mark invited all who did not wish to stay to the 
end of the Communion Service to leave the church at once. 

“I want you all to understand clearly,’ he said, “that 
Almighty God does not regard the sermons preached in His 
churches as the most important act of human worship. You 
no doubt would think it rude to walk out of the church in 
the middle of my sermon, however dull or stupid or irritat- 
ing you were finding it. I would ten thousand times rather 
that you trooped out while I was preaching than that you 
should insult Almighty God by trooping out in the middle 
of the service He instituted.” 

After this he retired to the sacristy to vest himself for 
the Mass. 

“My gosh!” Donald exclaimed, fingering the white silk 
chasuble. “Some handsome clothes! I never saw such 
handsome clothes not since the circus come to Rosemarket 
last Petertide.” 

“Now don’t talk,” Mark told him, “and try to remember 
all you’ve got to do.” 

“T shan’t forget,’ Donald said confidently. “I been prac- 
tising with Arthur Tangye on mother’s wash-stand. He said 
he wished he belonged to be in the choir. He said if you’d 


54 The Heavenly Ladder 


lev him come church and help carry things around he 
wouldn’t never go near the old chapel not if his mother beat 
Tun foreity 

This prospective martyr was aged ten and at this moment 
sitting in the middle of a long row of brothers and sisters 
half-way down the aisle. Donald did not bely his self- 
assurance. He served the priest as if he had done nothing 
else all his short life, and if the grown-ups were inclined to 
crane their necks to see what tricks their new Vicar would 
be at from one moment to another, the children of Nance- 
pean sat in wide-eyed awe under the fascination of Donald’s 
accomplishment. 

When Mark took off his chasuble and ascended the pulpit 
in his alb he felt amid the profusion of flowers and fruits 
like one of those monstrously substantial fairies that used to 
emerge from bouquets in the transformation scenes of old- 
fashioned pantomimes. His embarrassment was not lessened 
by knocking some half-a-dozen apples off the ledge of the 
pulpit, whence they went rolling and bumping along the 
stone-flagged aisle, filling the church with the sweet autum- 
nal perfume released by the bruises they had suffered in 
their fall. 

“My text,’ Mark began, “is the tenth verse of the first 
chapter of Ecclesiastes: 

Is there anything whereof it may be said, See this is new? 
it hath been already of old time, which was before us. 

“Many of you sitting here must have said before you left 
your homes this morning, “Let us go to church and find out 
what sort of man this new parson is,’ and many of you must 
have already said to yourselves, “Such goings on may be all 
very well up country, but in Cornwall we’re simple folk and 
we don’t like novelties, least of all novelties in church.’ 
Now, I’m not saying that this is a bad attitude to take up. 
We read in The Acts of the Apostles how the Athenians 
came to St. Paul and said to him, ‘May we know what this 
new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, 1s?’ And just after- 
wards we read that all the Athenians spent their time in 
nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing. 
Well, I prefer your attitude. I like you to feel suspicious 


Harvest Home 55 


of any novelty in your religion. There is nobody we despise 
more than the man who is for ever taking up with the latest 
fashionable craze. We jeer at him as a turncoat and a 
butterfly. But the way you are worshipping this morning 
is not new, and your forefathers just over three hundred 
years ago took up arms to defend this manner of worship- 
ping Almighty God. You say, ‘My father and my grand- 
father and his father before him did this or spoke thus, and 
for that reason I am not going to change.’ But why stop 
at the example of your great-grandfather? When the Cor- 
nishmen took up arms to defend the old faith, and when 
fifty years later they took up arms again to defend the old 
dynasty, they were overpowered by superior numbers and 
were beaten into submission. But they were never satisfied 
with the religion that was forced upon them. The wonder- 
ful success of John Wesley in Cornwall was largely owing 
to this dissatisfaction, and when Cornishmen flocked to hear 
him preach the Word of God they were only revolting like 
their forefathers, but in a different way. I don’t expect you 
immediately to enjoy the services I give you. All I ask you 
to do is to give them a chance. It would be much pleasanter 
for me to come back here among you all and continue in the 
old easy-going way to which you are accustomed. I spent 
a large portion of my childhood here in Nancepean, and I 
am not boasting when I claim to know you a little better 
than a complete stranger might. Believe me, my dear peo- 
ple, it is much harder for me to make up my mind to intro- 
duce changes that I know are going to be unpopular than for 
you to tolerate them. And I have only been able through 
God’s help to find the strength of mind to make these 
changes. You will often hear people saying that there are 
so many ways of worshipping Almighty God. Well, I don’t 
believe that. I believe that there is only one way—the way 
of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, in which, when- 
ever you say the Creeds, you declare yourselves believers. I 
am not going to try to convince you by arguments that my 
way of worship is the right way. I don’t believe that argu- 
ment ever convinced anybody about anything. I am simply 
going to beg you to pray to God in your own way to reveal 


56 The Heavenly Ladder 


to your hearts the Truth of the religion I preach. I know 
that if you pray humbly and earnestly for Divine guidance 
God_will hear your prayers, and that without any words from 
me you will believe. That does not mean I shall not try to 
explain to you the ceremonies that seem so strange at first. 
I should be a very poor and lazy kind of a priest if I left 
anything undone that could possibly help you to appreciate 
the importance of the changes I feel compelled to make. But 
unless you hear me with open minds, you cannot hope to 
believe. We all admire the beautiful fruits with which our 
church is decorated this morning; but it is not enough to 
offer God pumpkins and marrows and grapes and pears. 
We must offer Him the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, 
peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, 
temperance.” 

Mark felt that the congregation as a whole had been 
against him when he began to preach and that nothing he 
had said so far had done anything to change its attitude. 
His mind wandered in the arid desert that stretches infi- 
nitely, it seems, between a speaker and an audience with 
which he is out of sympathy. Even from those who wished 
him well, like William John Evans and his wife, he could 
not get that positive sense of encouragement which would 
perhaps enable him to make a dash across the dry and 
deserted tract of country that cut him off so utterly from 
his parishioners. William John was sitting with a face like 
one of those red masks seen in small shop-windows about 
the fifth of November, Mrs. Evans was stilted and motion- 
less and neutral as a draper’s waxen model. Mrs. Pellow 
was a sphinx. The black eyes of Tom Pascoe glittered 
snakily over the top of the harmonium. And then Mark 
caught the eyes of Miss Lambourne where she sat beside her 
tall bearded brother. He fancied that she was listening to 
him sympathetically and intelligently, and the imagination of 
this gushed forth from the barren ground before him like a 
spring from which he could drink. Thus refreshed he was 
able to move forward to the conclusion of his sermon. 

“Remember, my dear people of Nancepean, that once 
upon a time this Harvest Festival which now seems to you 


Harvest Home 57 


so important and so permanent a part of your religious life 
was a novelty at which your fathers shook their heads in 
disapproval. It was only invented fifty years ago by a High 
Church clergyman; and when it first began to be used, it 
was considered terribly ritualistic and popish. Yet even 
that was not really new, because years ago at Lammastide 
the priest blessed the coming harvest. And long, long before 
that, in the early days of the Israelites and their strangely 
personal communications with Almighty God, He spake to 
Moses from the cloud, saying, Thou shalt observe the feast 
of weeks, of the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast 
of ingathering at the year’s end. Well, we have observed 
that feast. All these pumpkins and marrows are the outward 
signs of our gratitude to God. Remember, however, that 
God is not content with external signs. When God came 
down on earth and took on our human flesh, He told us 
much more about Himself and much more about ourselves 
than He told Moses and Aaron and Elijah and Isaiah and 
all His holy prophets. It is right that you should read from 
the Old Testament, but for every verse of Exodus and 
Leviticus that you read and quote I wish that you would 
learn by heart two verses of the Holy Gospels. These pump- 
kins and marrows, plump though they be and beautifully 
though they be arranged, are still only pumpkins and mar- 
rows. Remember the words of our Blessed Lord Jesus 
Christ when His disciples bade Him eat: 

My meat ts to do the will of Him That sent Me, and to 
finish His work. Say not ye, There are yet four months, 
and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up 
your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already 
to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and 
gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth 
and he that reapeth may rejoice together. 

“The service of Holy Communion or, to use the old- 
fashioned word for which in days gone by Cornishmen laid 
down their lives, the Mass, is more important than any Har- 
vest Festival, because it was instituted by God Himself when 
God moved amongst us as man. I am not asking you to 
neglect or despise the Old Testament, but I do want you to 


58 The Heavenly Ladder 


realize that the words of our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ 
mean more to us than the words of God when He spake 
from out of a cloud unto Moses. Do not go away this 
morning and think that, because you have come with the 
pumpkins and the marrows to keep this Harvest Festival, 
you have thereby fulfilled your religious duty for a year. It 
is your business to attend and worship at the service insti- 
tuted by our Blessed Lord. It may be that you will want 
to criticize the services in this church; but you can only 
criticize fairly what you understand, and unless you come 
to church often you cannot hope to understand what is being 
done. Remember that our dear Lord never promised an 
easy time to those who wanted to become His followers. If 
the doctrines and forms and ceremonies of the Church were 
plain and easy and instantly comprehensible, we should not 
hear any talk of the failure of Christianity. It is because 
the Church will not surrender to popular taste that every 
day she loses some of her children. Remember that you are 
a part of the Church, or at any rate all of you who have 
received the sacrament of Holy Baptism in the Church. The 
Church does not mean an institution apart from yourselves. 
It is not a kind of secret society which makes special rules 
for its members, and initiates them into its secrets with 
fanciful rites and ceremonies. The Church is the visible 
manifestation of Divine Truth on earth. The Church is the 
guardian of that Truth. And you area part of that Church. 
If you deny the Church, you deny your own Baptism. If 
you deny the Church, you deny our blessed Saviour. I am 
saying all this because I do want you clearly to understand 
that I am not indulging in personal eccentricity by introduc- 
ing a lot of complicated novelties into the simple atmosphere 
of Nancepean. I am restoring to this church that which 
belongs to it. I have on my side the witness of countless 
holy men and women; I have to sustain me the blood of the 
Martyrs and the lives of the Saints. In Nancepean we are 
peculiarly favoured in the position of our church. Yes, I 
know that it is the habit among you to speak of its distance 
from the village, and of the inconvenience of its situation 
down here by the edge of the sea. But what a glorious wit- 


Harvest Home 59 


ness to Almighty God our little church is! I would not ex- 
change this isolation with the position of any church in 
Cornwall. When I think of how for centuries this little 
grey building has stood here through wintry nights of 
storms, when the foam has whitened the graves and when 
the very seaweed has been cast up by the waves to strew 
the graveyard, when I think that never for a moment in 
summer or in winter is the sound of the sea still, when I 
think of all those who have prayed here and communed here 
with God on Sunday mornings, I am overawed, and with 
deep humility and gratitude I give thanks to our Heavenly 
Father, because, of His great mercy, He has shown to a 
poor unworthy priest His power and His glory. Sea surge 
has changed the contours of the cliffs, golfers have changed 
the contours of the towans, farmers have changed the con- 
tours of the slopes, but through all change the church and 
its tower have remained where they were built, and by God’s 
protection the gates of Hell have not prevailed against them, 
nor the fury of the elements, nor even the destructive hands 
of men.” 

Once more Mark looked out from the windows of his soul 
and perceived between him and his congregation an empty 
desert. 

“Ah,” he cried, “you are still wrapped up in your Harvest 
Home. You are still counting the cucumbers and measuring 
the marrows. Remember the words of St. John in The Rev- 
elation, when he speaks of that last awe-inspiring Harvest 
Home: 

And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the 
cloud One sat like unto the Son of Man, having upon His 
head a golden crown, and in His‘hand a sharp sickle. 

And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a 
loud voice to Him That sat on the cloud, Thrust in Thy 
sickle and reap; for the time 1s come for Thee to reap: for 
the harvest of the earth is ripe. 

And He That sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle on 
the earth; and the earth was reaped. 

“Think of these words, my dear people, and remember 
that one day you will lie like pumpkins and marrows and 


60 The Heavenly Ladder 


cucumbers before the throne of God. You will be spread 
like wheat upon the threshing-floor. And He will gather 
the wheat into His garner, but the chaff He will burn with 
fire unquenchable.”’ 

Mark left the pulpit, sweeping off with his maniple as he 
descended what few apples remained. The harmonium 
struck up The Sower went forth sowing. William John 
Evans, trying to look as impersonal as he could, set out to 
gather in his crop of small coins. Mark vested himself 
again in the chasuble and continued the Mass. He wished 
now that he had not allowed himself to be stung by the 
apathy or hostility of the congregation into changing the 
key of his sermon. It had opened with an apology and 
concluded with an outburst of temper. It had been a de- 
plorable prologue to his work in Nancepean. Mark turned 
round to receive the alms for the Offertory, while the con- 
gregation sang with complacent cheerfulness: 


One day the heavenly Sower 

Shall reap where He hath sown, 
And come again rejoicing, 

And with Him bring His own. 
And then the fan of judgment 

Shall winnow from His floor 
The chaff into the furnace 

That flameth evermore. 


The cheerfulness swelled up even more blatantly. 


O holy, awful Reaper, 
Have mercy in the day 
Thou puttest in Thy sickle, 
And cast us not away. 
Amen. 


Mark thought that perhaps after all his parishioners had 
not been so greatly perturbed by his too violent denunciation. 
By their singing of the hymn they evidently regarded the 
prospect of the Day of Judgment with something more than 
equanimity, even with a positive relish. 


Harvest Home 61 


Mark did not suppose that his remarks during the sermon 
kept the congregation from going out after the Offertory. 
It was rather the defiant emphasis of speech with which he 
read the prayer for the Church Militant, and the rapidity 
with which he rushed them into the General Confession. 
They were caught in the trap of the “Second Service,” and 
there they had to remain until they could depart with the 
priestly benedictjon. 

The sun was shining brightly when Mark came out into 
the churchyard and found some of his parishioners whom he 
had not yet met waiting for him and gazing over the wall 
while they waited at the flood of the glittering tide across 
the sands of the cove. Farmers like Henry Martin, Fred 
Stithian, and Isaac Jago, hot chapel men all three, had shown 
their disapproval of a service to which they had only come 
as professionals of agriculture by stalking off with their 
wives and families to avoid meeting the new Vicar; but 
without these there were still many parishioners whom 
Mark had not yet had an opportunity of shaking by 
the hand. Miss Lambourne presented her brother Job, 
a tall, shy, bearded, taciturn man from whose attitude the 
least suggestion of moroseness was removed by the soft- 
ness of his big brown eyes, downcast and gentle as a 
woman’s. 

“How do, how do, how do,’ he muttered rapidly, and 
after gripping Mark’s hand he strode off like one who has 
already said too much. 

Miss Lambourne, toward whom Mark was still feeling 
cordial on account of her sympathetic attention in church, 
apologized for her brother’s awkwardness and inelegance. 

“But dear me, Mr. Lidderdale,’”’ she went on, “I must not 
monopolize you like this, or I shall be getting black looks 
from a lot of people. You won’t forget to come and see us 
soon, will you, Mr. Lidderdale? You'll find my brother 
rather less shy in his own house.” 

Miss Lambourne with a sweet smile passed on, and Mark 
turned to greet Mrs. Tangye, thinking with what remarkable 
ease Miss Lambourne bore herself and how merely by leav- 
ing her native village to become a nurse she had acquired 


62 The Heavenly Ladder 


real distinction. He felt quite convinced that Miss Lam- 
bourne was going to prove his strongest ally in the parish. 
The Tangyes were a new family to Nancepean since Mark’s 
childhood. Bill Tangye was a depressed, carroty little la- 
bourer on whatever farm in turn called for his services. His 
wife, fair, voluble, spectacled and feckless, had succeeded 
in bearing him a family of twelve children in fifteen years, 
seven of whom had survived. They all lived together in a 
half-furnished four-roomed cottage, the thatched roof and 
the walls of which were in a state of leaky disrepair owing 
to the fact that the last life of the three lives by which it 
was held was an old woman in Rosemarket verging on 
eighty. When she died, the cottage would revert to Colonel 
Greville, the owner of the land. Meanwhile, the present 
owner, Isaac Jago of Roscorla farm, did not see his way to 
repair it for the benefit of a man he esteemed less than a 
distant savage. Bill Tangye earned thirteen shillings and 
sixpence a week, and in August his two eldest sons, Walter 
and Jimmie, sometimes earned between them on the links 
as much as ten shillings a week, but for the rest of the year 
no more than an odd shilling occasionally. In spite of their 
limited income and miserable cottage from which they were 
liable to be evicted as soon as the old woman in Rosemarket 
died, they were, except for Bill Tangye himself, a cheerful 
family. The children, most of them orange-headed like 
their father and subsisting entirely on bread and a jam made 
from a certain kind of seaweed, were in spite of that the 
jolliest in Nancepean. 

“Good morning, Mrs. Tangye, I scarcely expected to see 
you in church,” Mark said. 

“Oh, well, I didn’t like not to lev the children get the 
chance to go church for Harvest Home. The Reverend 
Cass wouldn’t have no objection, and boy Arthur and maid 
Susie was both mad to come. Well, ’tis surely a nice change 
for them, and ’tis a bit quiet to Nancepean.” 

Boy Arthur and maid Susie were both beaming up at 
Mark while their mother was talking, and it struck him that 
these were the two non-carroty ones who had probably in- 


Harvest Home 63 


herited their mother’s expansive and amiable zest in 
existence. 

“But have you given up your post at the chapel?” Mark 
inquired. He was anxious not to let her suppose that he was 
prepared to buy her attendance, for the opinion of Nance- 
pean expressed severely by Mrs. Evans was that the Tangyes 
were likely to be church or chapel according to which was 
likely to feed them next. Their untidy and precarious exist- 
ence was a general topic among the neighbours in whom the 
discussion of the poor Tangyes begat a sense of comfort and 
superiority, as one likes to read by a warm fireside of 
storm-tossed mariners, or beneath an English lime-tree of 
pioneers contending with heat and thirst. These discussions 
were given a practical turn when Mrs. Tangye was ap- 
pointed official sweeper to the chapel, which meant that every 
Friday morning Sophie and Susie, her two eldest daughters 
aged eleven and nine, wrestled inside the chapel with brooms 
twice as tall as themselves, while their mother in a peaked 
cap and checkered overall stood in the road and engaged 
every passing neighbour in conversation about her Saturday 
visit to Rosemarket. The shilling she was paid every week 
by the chapel authorities gave Mrs. Tangye a real sense of 
the power of wealth. When she was talking to the neigh- 
bours instead of sweeping out the chapel, she used to say 
that she had made up her mind to go into Rosemarket to- 
morrow morning, because really her Walter’s boots were a 
disgrace, and maid Sophie could do with a new pair if it 
could be managed. But in the evening when Mrs. Tangye 
alighted from the carrier’s cart, she had usually spent the 
shilling on sweets and bought herself a new hat on credit. 

So, when Mark asked if she had given up her post at the 
chapel, he wanted to make it quite clear to Mrs. Tangye 
that she was not to expect a more lucrative job from him, 
and that he was by no means as much delighted to see her 
in church as to bribe her to come again. 

“Oh no, Mr. Lidderdale, I still belong to clean out the 
chapel. Well, you see, the extra shilling a week do come 
in very useful. Only last Wednesday—or was it Thursday ? 
—I was saying to Mrs. Wilton I really must buy Jimmie a 


64 The Heavenly Ladder 


new guernsey for the winter. Only they hadn’t one to 
Williams’s, and so I was able to buy a little coloured 
statuette I’d seen the week before. Walter made me a 
bracket for it, and it made such a difference to the kitchen. 
It seemed to regular brighten it up.” 

“T shall come and have a look at it,” Mark promised. 

Mrs. Tangye blushed. 

“Well, to speak truth, it were scat up only this morning. 
One of the maids took it down to show her little brother 
Willie. And Willie—yes, you bad boy, it’s you I’m talking 
about to Mr. Lidderdale . . .”’ Willie, who was three, hid 
behind the headstone of a tomb . . . “Come off that grave, 
you naughty boy, if you don’t want a ghost to eat you. Yes, 
Willie put the head in his mouth to suck, and when his sister 
went to snatch it away it dropped itself on the floor. A 
pity, wasn’t it, Mrs. Wilton? for if I’d known what was 
going to happen I’m sure I wouldn’t have bought it.” 

Mrs. Wilton, thus brought into the conversation, pre- 
sented Rosie and Maggie, her two little pink-faced girls, 
with an apology for her husband’s absence from church. It 
seemed that this was his Sunday for meeting the Lanyon 
coastguard on the cliffs in the morning. 

“T hope you enjoyed the service, Mrs. Wilton,” said Mark. 

“Oh, I enjoyed what I understood of it,” she replied. 
“Well, really I was brought up a Baptist myself, but Wilton 
is very strong for church and made quite a point of me 
bringing the children this morning.” 

Mark told her that he was looking forward to paying her 
a visit during the week and turned away to speak to Mr. 
and Mrs. Scobell. Mr. Scobell was a plump, clean-shaven 
man, with dark curly hair and a loose mouth. He was pros- 
perous in a small way, and wore a big Albert chain across 
his convex waistcoat. He had recently bought one of the 
two wedding-cake villas, much to the disapproval of the more 
devout Wesleyans who thought that it was terrible for their 
minister to have a man like Scobell living next door to him, 
Scobell who always drank too much on Saturdays and very 
often too much on other days, Scobell who seemed able to 
laugh at local opinion and drove a trap of his own, Scobell 


Harvest Home 65 


who actually considered that he was doing Nancepean a 
favour by living there, Scobell whose language when poor 
little Wesley Dale, the minister’s son, tramped on his gerani- 
ums would have been a disgrace even to an Englishman. 
Everybody said that Scobell lived on his father, who had 
retired from business and now grew begonias and cinerarias 
and gloxinias in that pretty little house with cork window- 
boxes and varnished rustic porch and a greenhouse on,emher 
side of it which won the admiration of everybody that drove 
into Rosemarket from Roseford. Scobell’s occupation was 
indeed rather a mystery. It was alluded to generally as 
“business,” and it involved driving about the countryside in a 
neat trap and drinking a large amount of whisky. His wife 
was one of those frail, fretful little women that one so often 
finds married to fat men, and he had two boys of seven and 
five, curiously Jewish in appearance, with raspberry-jam 
mouths and elaborate sailor suits with whistles attached to 
white cords. Frank and Eddie Scobell had blown these 
whistles all the way from Nancepean to Church Cove, and 
without doubt they would blow them all the way back, sow- 
ing in the heart of poor Arthur Tangye an envy that was 
expressed in such a passion of brooding as left him incapable 
of saying a word. 

“Well, there’s no doubt you’ve scared Nancepean,” Mr. 
Scobell announced jovially when he shook Mark’s hand. 
“Fred Stithian never walked up Pendhu hill quicker in his 
life, I believe.” 

“Don’t listen to Mr. Scobell, Mr. Lidderdale. He always 
exaggerates so dreadfully. Doesn’t he, Mrs. Scobell ?” 

Mrs. Scobell looked extremely frightened at being thus 
so abruptly pulled into a conversation on the bank of which 
she had been shivering. Nor was Mark much less taken 
- aback by what had quite definitely the character of a sudden 
assault. The speaker was a female painter who had come to 
Nancepean last April in search of skies, and seemed likely 
to remain there indefinitely. Her archness with Mr. Scobell 
found an explanation in the fact that she lodged at Tintagel, 
the Scobell villa, and considered that her residence made her 
one of the family, being as she told everybody a thorough 





66 The Heavenly Ladder 


Bohemian. Mark had avoided Miss Horton until now. He 
had caught several glimpses of her easel upon the cliffs and 
turned hurriedly in another direction, although he jeered at 
himself for postponing an encounter which must happen 
sooner or later, and might just as well happen soon. Miss 
Horton on this Sunday morning looked rather like a part 
of the harvest decorations which had been caught up unwit- 
tingly by one of the congregation and dragged outside. Her 
large-brimmed black straw hat was wreathed with poppies, 
and her green silk dress hung upon her, not in graceful folds 
as it should, but in the depressions one may see in a field of 
hay-grass beaten down by heavy rains. Her very cheeks, 
no doubt once rosy and bloomed with youth, had now the 
fierce colour and more naked texture of a poppy, and the 
artificial black added to her eyes had the same fierce black 
as poppy pollen. The comparison was so vivid in Mark’s 
mind that he actually found himself saying: 

“How d’ye do, Miss Shirley?” 

Miss Horton, however, was not at all upset by this. 

“T loved your sermon, Mr. Lidderdale,” she gushed. “In- 
deed I loved the whole service. So don’t listen to a word 
Mr. Scobell says.” 

“Miss Horton’s an artist,” Scobell replied. “All very well 
for her, but we aren’t all of us artists. Not that I’m against 
your style of services myself. But most of the people round 
here haven’t knocked around like I have.” 

Mrs. Scobell was beginning to assume dutifully the ex- 
pression of the regular listener, and it struck Mark that her 
change of countenance was the microcosm of a congrega- 
tion’s united attitude when the preacher invokes the Holy 
Trinity before his sermon. But Miss Horton was not going 
to let Mr. Scobell become reminiscent. 

“T hope you did not mind my bringing my dog to church, 
Mr. Lidderdale. He’s such a dear old thing, and he lies in 
the porch as quiet as a lamb.” 

The collie thus flattered barked with the monotonous and 
hollow insistence that so unpleasantly distinguishes a collie 
from all other large dogs and impairs its reputation for 


Harvest Home 67 


sagacity as the reputation of a great scientist or historian 
may be impaired by his boring talk in a club smoking-room. 

“Quiet, Rover! Quiet! Good old boy, not so much 
noise! Good old fellow!” 

Mark took advantage of the extra noise made by Rover 
in response to his mistress’s demand for silence to turn and 
greet Major Drumgold, who was emerging mysteriously 
from a conversation with the Pellows. 

“Tt won’t do, old chap,’ he said hoarsely to his vicar. 
“You've frightened ’em. By Jove, old boy, they’re fright- 
ened. George Pellow—capital fellow, George! George 
didn’t know where he was. He was bunkered by the ritual 
right off. So was Tom Pascoe—fine fellow, Tom! Tom 
foozled every hymn. I never heard him play like that be- 
fore. Well, it upset Whittington-Crowe. You know who I 
mean? You met him up at my place last week. Whitting- 
ton-Crowe said it reminded him of a service he attended by 
accident once in Dieppe. You know what I mean? Don’t 
be offended if I speak out plain.” 

Not at all,” Mark said: 

“Then give it up, old chap. I know the Cornishman. 
You know what I mean? I know him. And he’s very con- 
servative. All this High Church business might go down 
well up country, but not here, old boy, not here. Not in 
Nancepean. It’s exotic. That’s the word. Exotic.” 

“But you don’t object to exotic plants, Major.” 

The Major ignored the interruption. 

“What I mean to say is,” he went on, “they’re used to 
hearing what’s being said by the parson. They couldn’t 
understand a word of what you said. Some of it might 
have been Latin for all I heard of it.” 

“Some of it was Latin,’ Mark admitted coolly. 

“You don’t mean to say that you were praying in Latin? 
Great Scott! It'll cause a hue and a cry, old boy. It will 
really. A regular hue and a cry.” 

“But you don’t object to giving plants Latin names,” Mark 
said. 

“Yes, I do. I object strongly. I think it’s idiotic. I’m 
always forgetting what my plants are called. Andi it’s simply 


68 The Heavenly Ladder 


because they won’t give them decent English names. Sup- 
pose we used Latin for golf?” 

“The language you do use is just as unintelligible as Latin 
to ordinary men,’ Mark pointed out. ‘And it’s certainly 
twice as ugly.” 

“Well, I'll argue it out with you some other day,” the 
Major went on. “I must hurry back and help Topsy with 
the dinner. Two confounded girls ought to have come out 
last night by the Rosemarket bus, but they never turned up. 
By the way, old chap, Topsy didn’t stop to say how d’ye do. 
She’s walked on with Whittington-Crowe. To tell the truth, 
she was a bit upset by the service. It gave hera shock. You 
know what I mean? She’s got a deep religious streak, and 
it gave her a shock.” 

The Major hurried away to overtake his wife, and Mark 
climbed up into the Evans trap to drive back to the Hanover 
Inn, 

All the way up Pendhu hill William John Evans leant over 
the reins in moody silence, until his wife in exasperation de- 
manded the reason for such behaviour. 

“For dear life’s sake, William John, how don’t ’ee say 
something? It do give anyone the fidgets to see a man sit 
so awkward and bent up like a little old woman. My good- 
ness, I’m ashamed for ’ee! If I’d known you was going to 
be so stiff I’d have walked up with Donald and left ’ee to 
drive home along by yourself.” 

Just then they reached the brow of the hill and caught the 
fresh breeze blowing in from the bay. William John roused 
himself from his lethargy of gloom and, turning round, 
bellowed above the wind in Mark’s ear: 

“T was sucked in over the collection. It were under the 
pound.” 

Mark nodded to show that he had heard, but could not 
think of any comment that it would have been worth while 
to make audible above the wind. Balfour lowered his head 
and trotted so fast down the hill towards his stable that the 
occupants of the trap were too much engaged in avoiding 
being thrown out to bother about conversation. At dinner, 


Harvest Home 69 


however, William John returned to the subject of the col- 
lection, the poorness of which was still galling him. 

“T made sure we should have had a couple of pounds,” he 
said. “I was never more sucked in in all my life.” 

Mrs. Evans screwed up her eyes in withering disapproval. 
“If I were churchwarden, I’d be ashamed to talk so,” she 
declared. 

““*Twas the service as done it,” said her husband. “Fred 
Stithian put in a penny, and Isaac Jago never put in nothing 
at all, and when Grace Martin were going to put in a thrup- 
penny bit Henry Martin snatched it away from her, and the 
maid coloured up like fire. Major put in half a crown, but 
he shook his head at me when he done it, and I could see 
he were mad. And when I offered the bag to Tom Pascoe, 
who always belongs to put in a penny for Harvest Home, 
he only grinned and thumped the harmonium. I asked him 
afterwards how he didn’t put in his penny the same as he 
belonged, and he told me he’d sooner spend his money to 
see the circus to Rosemarket.” 

“Tom Pascoe!” Mrs. Evans scoffed passionately. “If I 
was Vicar of Nancepean I’d see Tom Pascoe rotting in one 
of his mean ordinary graves before ever I’d leave him play 
the harmonium to my church. Things will have come to a 
pretty pass when Nancepean church do live by Tom Pascoe’s 
pennies. My dear life, I’d like for him to have spoke to 
me about circuses. I’d soon have told him sharp that any 
circus “ud be glad to give him more than five pounds a year 
to wheel him round in a cage.” 

“Well, you can say what you’ve a mind,” the church- 
warden insisted, ‘‘but ’tis no use to say one thing and mean 
another, and if I didn’t tell Mr. Lidderdale such services 
as his would never take down here, why, I wouldn’t be acting 
fair by the man.” 

“What was the matter with the service?” Mark asked 
with a smile. 

“What were the matter with it?” William John repeated. 
“What weren’t the matter with it? Why, the Pope of Rome 
couldn’t have done worse.” 

“What ignorance and nonsense you do talk, William 


70 The Heavenly Ladder 


John,” his wife broke in. “As if you’d know the Pope of 
Rome when you saw him! ’Tis surely making yourself more 
foolish than you need to talk so light.” 

Mark did not delude himself into supposing that he had 
converted Mrs. Evans to Catholicism; but he saw no reason 
why contrariness should not serve as a channel for grace. 
The doctrines and the ceremonies that were the symbols of 
his belief were always irresistible if only people would not 
harden their hearts against them and refuse them patient 
consideration. Moreover, deep down in Mrs. Evans’ heart 
there must be a wellspring of romance which had flowed up 
to the surface when she had her only child christened 
Donald. It might surely happen that now for the first time 
her soul would have an opportunity to expand. Her sharp- 
ness and angularity were the expression of a hatred for 
commonplace existence. She was like one of those plants 
that flower and seed in desperation on poor and unpropitious 
soil, though their form may be distorted and their leaves too 
early sere. It did not strike him as absurd to hope that the 
prospect of endless adventures for the soul would reveal 
itself to her in the faith preached at St. Tugdual’s, nor too 
optimistic to believe that she would lose much of the sharp- 
ness and angularity in the wide vistas of eternity that might 
open to her passionate and resentful gaze. In any case Mark 
was assured of her son’s devotion, and through him of gain- 
ing the devotion of many of his youthful companions. After 
dinner he and Donald scrambled down to the cove below the 
inn and sat on cushions of thrift watching the chariots of 
the sea race up the swift-sloping beach. Westward over St. 
Levan’s Bay the puffed-out white clouds seemed to be blow- 
ing the breeze before them instead of being, as they were, 
themselves at its mercy. 

“Did I do fitty this morning, Mr. Lidderdale?” Donald 
inquired. 

Mark praised with enthusiasm his care and accuracy. 

“T wasn’t too sure once or twice,” Donald admitted in a 
retrospective memory of his achievement. “I felt a bit 
hurried once or twice, and when I were pouring the water 
over your fingers I nigh almost dripped the cruet. Funny 


Harvest Home 71 


thing, but when I were serving I never felt nothing in my 
knee all the time.” 

It was a temptation to claim a miracle worked by Donald’s 
faith, but Mark resisted it. 

“That’s because you were so tremendously concentrated 
on doing everything right,’ he said. | 
“Do you think my leg will ever be quite well? It don’t 

hurt now like it belonged.” 

“Of course it will be quite well one day,’’ Mark assured 
him. 

“Tt makes I mad sometimes,’ Donald confessed. “And 
Mum won't lev me use it so much as I’ve a mind to. She 
boxed my ears last night because I jumped on a chair to put 
on the clock. ‘Darn ’ee,’ I said, ‘you make enough trouble 
about me hurting my old knee, but you don’t mind boxing 
my ears.’”’ Then in a sudden apprehension of disloyalty to 
his mother, he went on quickly: “Boy Arthur said again he’d 
give anything if you’d lev him help down church. He 
reckoned to me that if he could wear a surplice on Sundays 
he’d do his work better for teacher. And when maid Susie 
laughed at ’un and said he could have her petticoats if he’d 
a mind, Arthur pushed her over a tombstone.” 

“Well, I’m going to start a Sunday-school soon,’ Mark 
said. “And if Arthur Tangye wants to come I shall be only 
too glad to see him there.” 

“T reckon that'll be grand,” said Donald. “I hope his 
mother’ll lev him come. She mightn’t. In case she lost her 
shilling a week from the chapel.” 

There was a very small congregation indeed for evensong 
of that Sunday, and Mark could not deceive himself into 
supposing that its smallness was due to the rising of the 
wind at twilight, which by church time had been blowing 
half a gale. There were not even oil lamps in St. Tugdual’s, 
and it had long been the custom for the housewives of the 
flock to take turns to provide candles for the service. These 
were stuck on the ledges of the pews, whence they cast huge 
hovering shadows of the worshippers upon the roof. This 
evening the decorations of the Harvest Festival touched with 
a more extravagant phantasy the penumbral scene, and the 


72 The Heavenly Ladder 


hardly discernible shapes of beans and cucumbers might 
have been goblin fruit to lure the unwary to hell. When 
Mark ascended the pulpit and looked down at Miss Lam- 
bourne and Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Pellow, each lighted by 
her candle, each appearing to him as might a shining world 
to God, and each being to God not less than the whole of a 
shining world, he was filled with desire that they should 
swing onward through time towards eternity, harmonious 
as the spheres. If only these three women would work 
together for the glory of God, what in Nancepean could 
withstand them? 

Mark took the text for his sermon that night from The 
Song of Solomon: 


Love is strong as death; jealousy 1s cruel as the grave. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE VICARAGE 


M ARK made haste to move into the Vicarage early in the 
week after the Harvest Festival. He took this step 


partly to preserve Miss Lambourne and Mrs. Pellow from 
the bane of jealousy with which his exclusive dependence 
upon the services of Mrs. Evans would certainly afflict them, 
partly because for personal reasons he was glad of an excuse 
to withdraw for awhile from the centre of village life. He 
was only too well aware how much he had prejudiced his 
future as vicar of Nancepean by that inauspicious Sunday 
morning, and he found the hearty self-satisfaction of Cass 
Dale almost unendurable. 

“You made a big mistake, Lidderdale,” said the minister, 
who had buttonholed Mark on his way up to consult Mrs. 
Pellow about provisions for the Vicarage. “Yes, you prop- 
erly frightened them. I suppose, as head of the other party, 
I ought to be glad. But I wish you well, Lidderdale, for old 
sake’s sake. Remember when I stood you on your head in 
a furze bush, eh? Ha, ha, ha! I’ve laughed over it once 
or twice since you came back.” 

“Yes, I remember,’ Mark said sharply. “And do you 
remember when you were afraid to walk up Pendhu hill by 
yourself, because you thought your grandfather’s ghost was 
watching for you by the churchyard gate?” 

“Well, I wasn’t used to the church when I was a kid,” 
said Cass, who flushed as deeply as ever he did at a joke 
against himself. ‘No, as I was saying, I wish you well, 
Lidderdale, and if you'll condescend to take a bit of advice 
from a benighted nonconformist, Ill give it to you and 
welcome. Go slow, that’s my advice. You'll never drive a 
Cornishman. Why, if you went on as you began you’d 

73 


74 The Heavenly Ladder 


empty a full church; but you’ve got to fill an empty one. 
Mind you, I don’t think you'll ever do that, whatever you 
give them in the way of services. But you’d get the people 
along occasionally, and you’d never find me bitter. We were 
friends as boys together, and I’m not going to forget that. 
But if I was to get up in my pulpit and beg my flock to give 
you a chance now and again, they wouldn’t listen to me so 
long as you pitch all that High Church... . Well, I be- 
lieve you’re sincere, and so I won’t use the word I was going 
to use. Honestly, Lidderdale, I hate to see you flinging 
away your own chances, even though it is all to my advantage 
that you should. Well, so long! Come in and have tea with 
us one day soon. The missus hasn’t met you yet, and she’s 
looking forward to the treat. We don’t see much society 
here.” Cass grinned. 

When Mark moved into the Vicarage he continued to 
take his meals at the Hanover Inn, and Mrs. Evans insisted 
on coming every morning to make his bed. Feeling that 
this was likely to create as much jealousy as living at the 
inn altogether, he looked round for a suitable housekeeper. 
At first he contemplated inviting the Tangye family to re- 
move themselves from the tumble-down cottage where they 
lived and take up their abode in the Vicarage. On second 
thoughts he decided that such an invitation would savour 
too much of bribing a whole congregation. Moreover, such 
a crowd would really be beyond his means. In the end he 
discovered a family even more consistently ne’er-do-well 
than the Tangyes, one of those families that are found on the 
outskirts of every village in every country. They are often 
notorious evil-doers, and in England their lawlessness usually 
takes the shape of poaching or, in a district like Nancepean, 
where no game is preserved and the land is divided up into 
small farms, of robbing their neighbours’ hen-roosts. Such 
families, like the Jewish scapegoat, play an ambiguous part 
in the service of morality, for they are the cause of exceed- 
ing self-righteousness among neighbours who from the su- 
perior altitude of prosperity and respectability are apt to 
forget that petty thieving is not the only sin. 

The ne’er-do-well family of Mark’s adoption lived in a 


The Vicarage 75 


cottage even more ruinous than the Tangyes’, at the foot of 
one of the furze-covered slopes of the valley down which his 
path lay from Nancepean to the Vicarage. Like the Tangyes’ 
cottage, this was held on the tenure of three lives, the last 
of which in this case was Aunt Penelope Prawle—Penelope 
was pronounced in three syllables, and on account of the 
“Pen” considered a good old Cornish name—who was a hale, 
active, hairy-faced old woman of sixty-five, with the muscles 
of an ox and the hindquarters of a sow. Her personality 
alone would have given this barren matriarch the chief posi- 
tion in the household without the additional importance 
conferred upon her by the fact that the whole family de- 
pended for the roof above their heads upon her life. In 
moments of extreme wrath she had been heard to threaten 
that she would drown herself in the diminutive stream that 
flowed along the valley at the foot of the cottage garden, 
and by such a drastic move put every one of her nephews 
and nieces on the parish. It would have been as easy for a 
hippopotamus to drown itself in such a stream as for Aunt 
Penelope; but she was known to be a woman of such un- 
restrained determination that the threat was accepted as 
serious. The rest of the family consisted of Albert Prawle, 
the grandson of an elder brother long dead, his wife Jennifer, 
their two children, Lily and Dick, aged nine and seven, and 
Toby Prawle, an unmarried nephew of fifty. Albert Prawle 
was a weak little man with straggly fawn-coloured mous- 
taches and pink cheeks, who was carter to Isaac Jago, of 
Roscorla. His wife had the shining, highly coloured com- 
plexion and stupid staring eyes that one sees in crudely 
painted puppets. Her movements, too, were wooden, and 
she possessed a natural ability to evoke squalor in the most 
favourable circumstances and amid the most beautiful sur- 
roundings. To watch her at work in her own yard was to 
watch a moulting fowl listlessly scratching in the garbage of 
a refuse-heap. Lily and Dick were not more interesting: 
than was to be expected from the offspring of such a couple; 
but Toby Prawle, their uncle, had personality, although he 
was as great a rogue as any between Land’s End and the 
Tamar. Toby Prawle from earliest childhood had been 


76 The Heavenly Ladder 


successful in avoiding any attempt to educate him, and in 
the whole of his life he had never had a regular job. He 
had contrived to reach his jubilee by occasional luck with 
what he found washed up on the beaches, by stealing poultry, 
by robbing wrecks (which might have been included in the 
luck of the beach), and since the opening of the links by 
finding and selling lost golf balls. In winter he snared wild- 
fowl on the cliffs with fish-hooks. He bred ferrets in quan- 
tity, and was made use of by the farmers to destroy the 
foxes and the badgers that infested a district where the 
huntsman’s horn was never heard. When he managed to 
kill a fox he would carry it round in a sack from farm to 
farm and collect a tribute of sixpence from each farmer in 
turn. He was a small, shifty-eyed, predatory creature, as 
slim and agile as a polecat, and with only two passions that 
distinguished him from the predatory creatures of the fields. 
One of these was his habit of walking into Rosemarket every 
Saturday and there getting completely drunk, after which he 
would always have a long story on Sunday for the neigh- 
bours of his adventures on the way home with piskies who 
had led him over hill and over dale until he had either been 
stagged in the moors or plunged head downwards in the 
Rose Pool. It was a strange tribute to the magic of alcohol 
that such a fellow’s tipsy dreams should take him into fairy- 
land. Toby’s other passion was a kind of lubricious curiosity 
that drove him at the shutting in of dusk to sneak round the 
cottages of Nancepean and surreptitiously peep in at the 
golden interiors revealed through cracks in the blinds and 
curtains. One would often meet the little man padding 
along in the dark and chuckling to himself at the memory of 
some rich sight vouchsafed to his interminable and patient 
inquisitiveness, just as one would often meet him by daylight 
padding along the beaches and chuckling at the thought of 
some treasure found and safely stored away in his pocket. 
This was the family that, in spite of the fierce protests of 
Mrs. Evans, Mark engaged to look after him at the Vicar- 
age. He did not flinch from the obvious truth that by paying 
this family to gratify his domestic requirements he was pay- 
ing them to worship Almighty God in the way he thought 


The Vicarage 7 


right. Still, in securing their attendance at Mass every 
Sunday morning he was not interfering with the claims of a 
rival, as he would have been by employing the Tangyes on 
the same terms. If the Prawles did not hear Mass on Sunday 
morning in church they would not have been more likely on 
that account to listen to the sermons of the Reverend Casimir 
Dale in chapel. Mark argued with himself that in this case 
bribery was justifiable, because there was at least a chance 
of conversion from nothing to something. It was not brib- 
ing people to believe. That would have been self-evident 
folly. It was bribing people to give themselves an oppor- 
tunity of believing. Moreover, Albert Prawle himself was 
still Isaac Jago’s carter, and it was up to that bitter and 
bigoted man to threaten him with the loss of his job if he 
surrendered to the wiles of Popery. The farmer was not 
likely to do that, for Albert was a good carter, considerate 
and capable with the horses and not afraid of work, a man 
who, with the right kind of wife, might have raised himself 
above his relations. In fact, the more Mark saw of Albert 
the more highly he esteemed him, and he began to persuade 
himself that Albert’s dullness was a kind of moral protest 
against the greedy cunning of the others. Mark did not flat- 
ter himself that he had cured Toby Prawle of even the worst 
of his drunkenness because by insisting on his attendance 
at Mass every Sunday morning he had made that old hope- 
less intoxication of Saturday night an impossibility. Mrs. 
Evans soon made it clear to him that Toby’s abstinence was 
not the result of his priestly persuasion. The toper had been 
converted by the vigour with which Aunt Penelope had laid 
into him with a rolling-pin and with apostolic blows taught 
him not to imperil the family fortune by his behaviour. Mrs. 
Evans added, for Mark’s information, that Toby had merely 
changed his time-table and now got drunk every Wednesday 
night instead, which he counted a grievance against the Lord 
in that it interfered with his Thursday scavenging along the 
beaches and deprived him of a day’s earnings. Aunt Penel- 
ope was extremely anxious that the whole family should 
take up its abode in the Vicarage, and she would often be- 
moan to Mark the frailty of her life. But on this point he 


78 The Heavenly Ladder 


was firm, and bought the family two lanterns instead, so 
that what the old lady claimed was the dangerous journey 
between the Vicarage and the cottage might be performed in 
safety even on moonless winter nights. Aunt Penelope 
fought hard for the lodging she coveted, from time to time 
thrusting her face right into his and offering hoarsely to 
move all their furniture from the cottage, even if she had to 
carry it stick by stick on her own back. Mark did not relish 
these arguments at such close contact with Aunt Penelope, 
who in her eagerness to have her way seemed likely at any 
moment to bite off his lower jaw and thus put an end to his 
arguing the point any longer. Mark knew that furniture. 
He had not only seen it, but he had smelt it, and he held out 
against the transportation. He might have tolerated Albert’s 
half of the family, but the prospect of Aunt Penelope’s re- 
lentless tongue and the prospect of Toby’s ferrets and sly 
noctambulant excursions were more than he could face. 

So every evening, when Jennifer and Aunt Penelope had 
at last finished with the quack and clatter of washing up the 
clomb, the Vicarage took on a tremendous silence. There 
were very few rooms furnished, and even of these Mark had 
wanted to combine dining-room and study in one room. 
Mrs. Evans, however, had insisted so strongly on the lack 
of dignity that such an arrangement would convey to the 
imagination of his parishioners that Mark had given way 
and agreed to buy a painted yellow sideboard, and a table of 
imitation mahogany round which six chairs waited like a 
skeleton committee. His grandfather’s old study, where 
Mark had learned Latin, was now his own study, a comfort- 
able and spacious room furnished with a couple of large, 
low wicker chairs and three or four hundred well-read books. 
Mark could not afford to have it redecorated, which was a 
pity, because the grey wallpaper was a dishevelled bower of 
dingy foliage in which the oriental concepts of his prede- 
cessor still roosted. Alas! there was a great deal less left 
of old Parson Trehawke than of the Reverend John Jacob 
Morse, whose concentration upon the whereabouts of the 
lost tribes of Israel over a space of twenty years had oblit- 
erated the personality of the scholarly old naturalist. The 


The Vicarage 79 


shadow of a savage tribal god haunted the recesses; turbans 
and gabardines, hooked noses and pendulous underlips, the 
odour of stale manna, patriarchs, palm trees, and levitical 
prohibitions clung to it, and even the cracked plaster beside 
the window, owing to the invasion of a swarm of bees, 
flowed with honey like the land of Canaan. At St. Cyprian’s 
Cyril Nash had invented a game of rhymes about absurd 
animals and birds such as the kangarooraldean or the omni- 
bustard, of which Mark remembered two lines about a 
fabulous monster called the antimacassowary: 


Which sits im corners of the room, 
Shedding an atmosphere of gloom. 


He wondered how long it would be before he should be 
able to drive the creature forth. 

Upstairs Mark had furnished for himself the little bed- 
room in which he had slept as a child, and for the friends 
whose visits he had planned to enjoy in the summer time 
he had made of his mother’s old room next door a scantily 
furnished spare room. The rest of the ancient house was 
a desert of hollow-sounding caves, round which Mark would 
sometimes make a nocturnal pilgrimage, candle in hand, 
retiring at last in a deliberately engendered luxury of breath- 
less relief to his study, where, in spite of the antimacas- 
sowary, he would find a comparatively jolly atmosphere. 
Huddled over the fire, he would waste an hour bewitched 
by the mental contemplation of those empty rooms that 
existed upstairs and downstairs in motionless rows, each one 
in its mournful sameness like the next, each one conversing 
with itself now in lisps and whispers, now in sighs and 
moans, according as the wind gave it voice, each one suffer- 
ing from a complete annihilation of itself as an active per- 
- sonality, yet each one by that very annihilation of per- 
sonality achieving the positive and naked impact of person- 
ality that is achieved by a ghost. Mark would sometimes 
strain his ears in affright when an unheralded gust of wind 
gave him the notion that a door had blown open. There was 
not anybody nor anything that would emerge; but the 


§0 The Heavenly Ladder 


thought of one of those doors remaining open all through the 
night was the fancy of a malignant effluence of emptiness set - 
loose to steal like a miasma along the corridors, to wreathe 
the balusters with invisible fumes, to flow out slyly and 
ceaselessly all through the long night and suffocate with 
nothing the mind, the heart, the very soul of the solitary 
human inhabitant. In such moods at such times Mark 
longed for music, as in the Middle Ages bells were rung 
to frighten devils. He tried to find in poetry a refuge from 
the invading emptiness, but the poet’s world was not as 
remote and romantic and inaccessible as the world of ordi- - 
nary life. The noise of motors to his mind’s ear was as 
thrilling as the dulcimer of an Abyssinian maid or the song 
of that Highland reaper. 

Filled with a poetical imagination of London, he set his 
hand to making verses about the evoked emotion; but when 
they were written down they sounded like the sentimentalities 
of the music-hall; and as a poet adds to his renown by 
dying young, Mark’s verses earned a brief apotheosis by 
flaring up from the embers of the dying fire. From poetry 
Mark turned to mystical theology, without any more suc- 
cess. In the commonplace of a crowded city mysticism gains 
much by contrast. Down here in this lonely house and lonely 
corner of England the pursuit of mysticism aggravated his 
isolation. He seemed unable to gain anything more con- 
soling from his study of mystical experience than the im- 
pression of various other overwrought contemplatives strug- 
gling on through their earthly pilgrimage, always a prey to 
their sense of utter abandonment by God. 

Anybody who lives alone is apt to resort to a less civilized 
mode of life. The first temptation is not to shave regularly. 
If this be succumbed to, regression into barbarous habits of 
behaviour is steady and swift. Presumably, if a man could 
live long enough in solitude he would gradually get back to 
his father the ape. Mark did not begin to neglect his shav- 
ing, and outwardly he still conformed as rigidly to the 
habits of civilization as if he were still a curate in a fashion- 
able London parish. He did, however, detect in himself 
a tendency to revert to an earlier attitude of mind. He 


The Vicarage 81 


tried to pretend at first that this was a laudable release of 
himself from the shackles of sophistication, and that he was 
discovering in Nancepean the way to a truer and simpler life. 
But soon he perceived that he was travelling back mentally 
in the direction of his youth. The terror of place which he 
had felt so acutely on his first night at the Hanover Inn in- 
creased rather than diminished. He ascribed this partly to 
finding himself alone after a long interval of absence in the 
environment of his earliest acute impressions. It was sig- 
nificant that he fell a victim once more to a childish night- 
mare which had formerly recurred periodically. This was to 
find himself toward twilight lost in the middle of the desolate 
interior of the Rhos peninsula, knowing that as soon as it 
was dark the stones which seemed to browse among the 
heather like huge placid beasts would acquire the power of 
movement and molest him. He would start to flee from 
them, all the strength running from his limbs like water 
from a sieve, until at last, panting and shrieking from the 
strain of that thunderous pursuit, he would somehow gain 
the Vicarage, and even as he slammed the door behind him 
know that the questing stones would pass through and fill 
the house. Sometimes he would wake in a sweat before 
the first megalith had burst open the door, sometimes he 
could not wake up until some elephantine lump of granite 
had pounded up the stairs and reached the door of his own 
room. 

Mark did not attempt to seek an interpretation of this 
dream. He ascribed it to the reaction in solitude to his 
strenuous life as a curate. He had no doubt that the ex- 
planation was to be found in a nervous condition, and that 
it was similar to the delusions that accompany fever. Yet 
he could not avoid speculating if the human mind in such 
moments of intensified though misdirected mental energy 
might not be more capable of recognizing the substance of 
reality. It was a commonplace of biology that the individual 
after a prenatal compendium of evolution from protoplasm 
to man spent his postnatal existence in achieving within the 
limits of his breeding a compendium of human development. 
it was attractively easy to explain away the fears and horrors 


82 The Heavenly Ladder 


of childhood by pointing out an analogous attitude toward 
nature in the savage, but was it the right explanation? Was 
it so absolutely certain that the peasant who suffered from 
what the educated observer would call an unreasonable fear 
at twilight of the very air he breathed was unreasonable? 
Might he not be better able to recognize the substance of 
the twilight’s reality than the educated observer whose per- 
ceptions had become clogged by an accumulation of experi- 
ence that was often more partially assimilated than he sup- 
posed, as much better able to do this as to read the weather 
in the sky without the help of a barometer? And might not 
his own unreasonable terrors, which it was so attractively 
easy to explain by loneliness working on already over- 
wrought nerves, be his soul’s apprehension of the powers of 
evil that were gathering to contest his fight for Nancepean? 


CHAPTER V 
FOUR LETTERS 


ARK did not spend all his time in frightening himself 
with bogies, as some of his letters written during that 
autumn will show. 
The first was to his late Vicar, the Reverend Drogo 
Mortemer: 


My dear Mortemer, 

It was really good of you to write me such a long and 
amusing letter when you’re so busy, and as for your offer 
to present a stone altar to my church I’m left without words 
to thank you enough. I’m afraid that I cadged it, though I 
hadn’t the courage to ask for it directly. Stephen Crutchley, 
of course, will be just the man for the design. I'll send him 
the measurements of the church at once and also a photo- 
graph of the chancel as soon as I can get a fellow out from 
Rosemarket. I’m already losing touch with London and 
can’t for the life of me be sure whether Crutchley’s offices 
are in Staple Inn. I feel sure that they are, but you might 
send me his address on a postcard. I suppose if I wait 
for a faculty it will be months before we get the altar in its 
place. I don’t fancy that there will be any opposition, but 
if there were, the Chancellor would refuse it, so I think I’ll 
put it in without a faculty, and in the event of objections 
trust to the difficulty of removing such a weighty affair. 
This stone altar must have been very much in my mind 
lately, for I have been having queer dreams of being pursued 
across waste places by troops of angry granite boulders. 

You ask how I am getting on. Not very brilliantly, I’m 
afraid. The people are friendly and pleasant enough on the 
surface; but they certainly do not like the Catholic religion. 

83 


84 The Heavenly Ladder 


Of course, I have given them a strong dose of it, and yet 
I don’t believe that they would have made any less fuss if 
I had tried a gradual inoculation. Moreover, although it 
is generally reputed that I have emptied the church, I cannot 
find that the regular congregation was any larger in the time 
of my predecessor. No doubt by the courtesy of the opposi- 
tion he was able to muster a better showing on the supreme 
festivals of the Christian year, like New Year’s Day and 
Harvest Home, but normally he had no more souls than I 
have. By the way, talking of my predecessor, I think I’ve 
already told you that the ambition of his life was to identify 
the British nation with the lost tribes of Israel. The other 
day I was emptying the stables at the back of the Vicarage 
and climbed up through a trap-door into an old loft, ina 
back corner of which I found a large stack of pamphlets 
tied up in parcels of fifty. Masses of them left in spite 
of the rats and mice having apparently subsisted on them 
for years. I thought at first that I might have stumbled 
upon a collection, but every bundle was made up of the 
‘same pamphlets. It’s scarcely credible, but this is what it 
was: “When was Circumcision Lost in Great Britain? By 
the Reverend John Jacob Morse, M.A., sometime Post- 
master of Merton College, Oxford.” I’m sending you one 
under separate cover. I suppose the publisher protested at 
having to house them any longer, and that poor old Morse, 
unwilling to destroy what was apparently his only contri- 
bution to literature—his magnum opus was never finished— 
fed the rats with these poor bantlings of his pen. It’s a 
queer thing to live in this big, empty, desolate and remote © 
house all by myself and ponder upon a predecessor that spent 
twenty years in meditating such problems. The children 
‘here tell me that he was in the habit of measuring their noses 
for traces of Judaic origin. I wonder what fad I shall evolve 
out of this isolation? My Vicarage would make fine head- 
quarters for a spiritualist. You never heard such rappings 
and tappings and sighings and breathings. Once more my 
deepest thanks for your gift of the altar. Whatever else I 
leave of myself in Nancepean (I hope it won’t be a rat-eaten 


Four Letters 85 


bundle of pamphlets) I shall at any rate leave a solid me- 
morial to your goodness and generosity. 
Yours ever, 
Mark Lidderdale. 


The second letter was to the Reverend Michael Heriot, 
Senior Curate at St. Cyprian’s, South Kensington: 


My dear Heriot, 

I daresay Mortemer has told you that he is presenting a 
stone altar to my church. Will you occupy yourself with 
procuring for me the relics of a martyr? I believe I am 
right in thinking that nowadays one is considered enough; 
but you will correct me if I am wrong. I miss your Du- 
chesne. Crutchley is going to design it, and I wish you’d go 
into the question of the sepulchrum. It will have to be lined 
with lead. We cannot run to a more precious metal here. 
One more request. I find that the Cathedral of Tréguier 
has several bones of St. Tugdual, our patron saint. Do try 
on your next trip to Brittany to procure for me the smallest 
fragment of a bone. I don’t suppose you would get the 
Cathedral authorities to part, but there are probably other 
relics of the saint in the district, and you might be able to 
secure a knuckle. 

I think you are wise to turn your face against all prefer- 
ment. I find that as a beneficed priest I am now beginning 
to ask myself if I have any business in the Church of Eng- 
land. Mind you come and stay with me for awhile in the 
summer. I shall need cheering up. 

Yours ever, 
Mark Lidderdale. 


The third letter was to the Rector of Wych-on-the-Wold: 


My dear Rector, 

I ought to have written weeks ago and told you how I was 
getting on in Nancepean. I daresay that I should have done 
so if I had felt any assurance that I was making the least 
progress. The trouble is that I’m not. I wonder, when you 
first went to Meade Cantorum, if you felt like a missionary 


86 The Heavenly Ladder 


who had landed on the wrong island by mistake, for that is 
what I feel like, and I’m half inclined to resign my living 
and go away and try to convert some genuine heathen. I 
should like to know that if I failed I should be roasted and 
eaten. This does not arise from any morbid desire for 
martyrdom, but one does writhe under the suggestion that 
one is the victim of self-indulgence. That really is the atti- 
tude of the average man towards us. It didn’t seem to mat- 
ter when I was a curate. In fact it always seemed rather 
fun to shock people. But one grows out of that, and like a 
man who “settles down” and gets married one gets irritated 
at being supposed to be still the prey of youthful indiscre- 
tions. 

Apart from all that, ’m beginning to ask myself if these 
people haven’t got the religion they want. To me it seems 
more remote from Christianity than Mahommedanism, but 
no doubt to them my Christianity seems as remote as Bud- 
dhism. By the way has anybody ever called Mahommedans 
the Protestants of the East? I know that superficial re- 
semblances between Catholicism and Buddhism have been 
remarked often enough. I daresay that I shall be able to 
get the children, but shall I keep them when they grow up? 
The Cornish have taken to a debased form of Wesleyanism 
like ducks to dirty water. One ought to be able to find out 
just what it is that attracts them and bring out that aspect 
of Catholicism, for if Catholicism is what we think it is it 
must contain everything that Wesleyanism can offer. I see 
the attraction of Wesleyanism for the farmers, who are 
nearly all local preachers and like to hear their own voices, 
but I’m bothered if I can understand why the rest of the 
people should want to listen to them. It’s not that the local 
preachers spout more intelligently. Most of them are hope- 
lessly inexpressive and dull. I wonder if the priests were 
taken from the people as in Ireland whether that would wean 
them from Wesleyanism? And then I ask myself what is 
the power of teetotalism over them. Why should the Band 
of Hope knit them more closely together than some Catholic 
fraternity? They have not had any terrible experiences 
down here of the evils of drink. I think it must be that 


Four Letters 87 


they really don’t require alcohol. The climate is so much 
kindlier than over most of England. It would be fun to 
divert the Gulf Stream and see how long teetotalism re- 
mained the ruling passion. Perhaps I shall write more 
optimistically when I have my Sunday School in full swing. 
At present beyond saying Mass to half-a-dozen people on 
Sundays and to empty pews on week-days I do nothing to 
earn my ninety pounds a year. I said empty pews on week- 
days, but alas, since All Souls’ Day, when after the requiem 
we flung flowers into the sea to tend the graves of the 
drowned, a lady painter has taken to appearing. She insists 
that I have converted her, which is embarrassing, because 
I’m sure that the village imagines that I have been making 
love to her. Miss Horton—that is her name—is a real trial. 
I feel terribly at her mercy and wish that she would revert 
to the paganism from which she goes about boasting that I 
have rescued her. What is to be done with these impossible 
predatory women who nowadays roam the country like the 
wild beasts of the past? What do you think she said to me 
after Mass this morning? “Mr. Lidderdale, I came to 
Nancepean in search of skies, but I did not know that I 
should find Heaven!” I muttered something about my 
breakfast getting cold and fled. I shall really have to take 
up golf. I fancy that by steady practice one should be able 
to kill at forty yards. Well, I mustn’t wander on any longer, 
but go to bed. Love to all at Wych. I hope that I shall 
be visited by some of you next summer. I have fourteen 
spare rooms at the Vicarage, but only one is furnished. 
Your ever affectionate, 


M,C. 


The fourth letter was to Pauline Grey: 


Dearest Pauline, 

Perhaps if I try to give you an idea of my parish and 
parishioners it will help me to get my own ideas about them 
in some kind of order. At present you could knock me 
down on a feather, as old Mrs. Geary used to say, I’m that 
overgone by it all. And I hardly know whether I’m sitting 


88 The Heavenly Ladder 


on my nead or my heels. Nobody ever expressed stupefac- 
tion so eloquently as Mrs. Geary. I sent you a picture post- 
card of the church, so I needn’t describe that to you. The 
most delicious thing about it is that when you sit for awhile 
alone inside you hear the sea in the same way that you do 
from inside a deep cave. Sometimes I half expect to turn 
round with the Host at Mass and perceive a congrega- 
tion of adoring mermaids. It was built by two princesses 
of Brittany who were wrecked here long ago. I always think 
of them dressed in sea-green velvet like the princess in 
Pisanello’s fresco of St. George. The Vicarage is a great 
gaunt house—or it would be a gaunt house if it weren't 
covered with all kinds of things like magnolias that my 
grandfather planted. By the way, I’m sending you a box of 
queer leaves of various kinds in the hope that your father 
will be kind enough and clever enough to tell me their names. 
T have a neighbour, Major Drumgold, who can only be kept 
under by my being able to browbeat him with the Latin 
names of plants. I live in the Vicarage like one jackdaw in 
a huge dovecot. I forget just how many empty rooms there 
are, and besides empty rooms in the house there is an empty 
stable and an empty barn and an empty greenhouse and an 
empty pigstye outside. I am looked after by a ridiculous 
woman called Jennifer Prawle, whose name is the best 
part of her, though she has an amusing and fierce old Aunt 
Penelope, who routs about in the kitchen, grunting and 
snorting like a pig. They go home every night after washing 
up, which is rather a grievance on account of the ghosts that 
stand thick between the Vicarage and their tumbledown cot- 
tage along the valley. 

The nicest people in Nancepean are William John Evans 
and his wife. William John is the landlord of the Hanover 
Inn. I don’t know Mrs. Evans’ Christian name, because her 
husband never dares make use of it. They have a delightful 
boy of eleven called Donald, who has had what I fancy was 
a tuberculous knee. He’s a delicate, fanciful creature, with 
eyes like a summer night. Mrs. Evans is angular and jealous 
and passionate, but mercifully accustomed to speak out her 
mind at once, which most of the people are not. I think that 


Four Letters 89 


my chief claim to her favour is the interest that serving at 
the altar has provided for Donald. It absorbs a good deal 
of his energy, which, owing to his lameness, has had to be 
suppressed latterly. Serving is not as likely to involve him 
in a bad fall as the curiously violent game of Touch that is 
fashionable among the children of this village. I really do 
think that I have got hold of him, which is a horrid crusta- 
cean way of talking, but you won’t misunderstand me. The 
boy is bursting with the poetry of youth, and the kind of 
religion he'll get from me will, I hope, encourage him to 
express himself. One is afraid of fancying mute inglorious 
Miltons, but I really do believe that this child has a power 
of vision. I think I am justified in calling Mrs. Evans my 
leading supporter, especially as her husband, whom she rules 
with her tongue, is one of the churchwardens. Her only 
rival could be Miss Lambourne, who has recently come back 
home to keep house for her farmer brother. She was a 
nurse in London and acquired an outward gentility of which 
the rest of the village is profoundly suspicious. At first I 
was inclined to think that she really was what is called “‘su- 
perior to her surroundings,” but latterly I’ve come to the 
conclusion that underneath she is just as jealous and primi- 
tive and fierce as Mrs. Evans. I went to tea with her last 
week, and she never passed me a cake without getting in a 
dig at somebody. I hate that, don’t your Id sooner be 
poked in the ribs with the butter-knife. But my real cross is 
Miss Horton, a lady painter, who comes every morning to 
Mass with a most idiotic collie called Rover. I don’t dis- 
courage the dog, because he is sure to throw her off her 
bicycle presently, and then she'll have to go to the cottage 
hospital and be fed on vegetable marrows left over from 
harvest festivals. I know I ought not to say so already, 
but I’ve a feeling that I’m going to make a mess of things 
here. I am writing this because by putting it down on paper 
I am helping myself to fight the spirit of doubt and despair. 
So long as I just let it haunt the dim backgrounds of the 
mind, I’m able to shirk the issue. But now I’ve written 
it out, I’ve no longer any excuse to do that. 


90 The Heavenly Ladder 


I wanted to give you some idea of my parish, and I’ve 
only succeeded in writing a muddled letter which tells you 
nothing. 

Yours always, 
M. L. 


CHAPTER VI 
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 


ARK had been right in supposing that, if the children 

of Nancepean intended to try his Sunday school, their 
wishes would outweigh any distaste of their parents for the 
kind of religious teaching he would be giving them and the 
services at which he would be demanding their attendance. 
The pivot of the collection was Donald Evans, not merely 
because he was naturally the first child whom Mark would 
seek to enrol, but also on account of his own qualities of 
mind and disposition that, in spite of the handicap of lame- 
ness and delicate health, had given him the leadership of the 
Nancepean village school, a world of which Mark would 
soon have the freedom thanks to his association with the 
scholars, a world in the contemplation of which he would 
take refuge as one takes refuge in the world disclosed by 
the microscope or as children escape from the insolence of 
reality into fairyland. Lily and Dick, the two Prawle chil- 
dren, were the next; but partly because their attendance was 
really a portion of the family service, like dusting a room, 
and partly because neither of them was an interesting child, 
Mark did not feel that their membership contributed much 
to the growth of his class. Nor did the addition of Winnie 
Pellow. Indeed, for the first month it was hard to believe 
that it was really a Sunday school, so much was it a colloquy 
between himself and Donald to the accompaniment of the 
heavy breathing of the other three children, stolid and un- 
comprehending as the bench on which they sat, their dangling 
legs expressive of utter indifference to what was going on. 
The class was held in the parish-hall, which was a minia- 
ture of the hideous chapel next door, and the dreariness of 
the winter afternoons was accentuated by the sound of sing- 


gI 


92 The Heavenly Ladder 


ing in the rival class, where twenty-five children were being 
instructed by the Reverend Casimir Dale in the mysteries 
of the Christian faith. Mark fancied that Donald must be 
smarting under a sense of hopeless inferiority, and that he 
was perhaps already afraid that his membership of such a 
negligible Sunday school might imperil his leadership of the 
secular school. Yet the boy did not show the slightest sign 
of being in a minority, except on one occasion when the 
dismissal of the two classes happened to coincide. Then he 
made some excuse to detain Mark with questions until the 
twenty-five children next door were safely on their way 
home. 

“T wouldn’t like for ’em to laugh at us,” he explained to 
Mark, his brows knitted. “And if I was to punch one of 
"em, Mr. Dale might say that was Church manners.” 

Soon after this Tom Pascoe, the sexton, volunteered to 
come and play the harmonium so that the children could 
sing hymns. But Mark could not bear the prospect of Tom 
Pascoe’s snaky face looking at him over the top of the 
harmonium. It would make him feel self-conscious, and 
any chance he had of managing to interest Winnie, Dick and 
Lily would vanish. So he declined Tom Pascoe’s offer and 
tried to persuade himself that hymns were a mistake in a 
Sunday school class. Soon after this, of all unwelcome 
people, Miss Horton proposed her services, and Mark, whose 
conscience had pricked him for refusing Tom Pascoe, ac- 
cepted them so ungraciously that his conscience pricked him 
again, and he went to tea with Miss Horton in order to atone 
for his rudeness. Like an ass he told her in the morning 
of his intention, so that the whole village resounded with the 
coming event. Miss Horton went hurrying off full pelt to 
Rosemarket to buy a chocolate cake, the string round which 
came undone half-way home, whereupon she bicycled back 
faster than ever and bought another, with which she arrived 
in a crimson stew of haste and agitation about a quarter of 
an hour before her guest was expected. On his way from 
the Vicarage Mark overtook Miss Lambourne, who gave 
him good day and hoped with a forgiving smile that he 
would have a pleasant afternoon at Miss Horton’s. This 


The Sunday School 93 


nearly sent him home again, and jt was only by an effort 
that he controlled his annoyance and continued on his way. 
On emerging from the cart-track by Roscorla farm, the first 
thing he saw was the back of Mrs. Tangye, apparently on 
the watch, for she was clasping her broom as a sentinel his 
spear and was shielding her eyes against the glitter of the 
low wintry sun across the sea while she gazed intently down 
the road that led on to Church Cove. 

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Tangye,” said Mark. “Are you 
looking for one of your children?” 

Mrs. Tangye turned round with a jump, her eyes appear- 
ing likely to come through her glasses in goggling amaze- 
ment. 

“Oh, Mr. Lidderdale’s come. I am so glad,” she ex- 
claimed. “Miss Horton has been out a dozen times to look 
for ’ee, and I promised her I’d wait about until I see you 
come along so as she could put the kettle on.” 

“Good gracious me, Mrs. Tangye,” Mark burst out in 
irritation, “I should have thought you had enough to occupy 
your time without acting as a scout for Miss Horton.” 

“Well, that’s right, Mr. Lidderdale, I have got enough to 
do,” she agreed warmly. “But there, I didn’t like to refuse 
the poor soul. I do always say if anybody can’t be neigh- 
bourly to a place like Nancepean one might so well die and 
be done with it all.” 

“Nonsense,” said Mark testily. “I hope next time that 
Miss Horton makes such an idiotic request you’ll tell her 
you have something better to do than stand staring about in 
the middle of the road.” 

“Will I just run up to Tintagel and tell her Mr. Lidder- 
dale’s come?’ Mrs. Tangye asked, quite unabashed by 
Mark’s rebuke. | 

“Certainly not,’ he snapped, and being aware by now 
that most of the windows held curious faces behind their 
lace curtains, he left Mrs. Tangye, and, passing through the 
elaborately gilded iron gate of Tintagel, strode fuming back- 
wards and forwards along the zigzag path that led up 
through the narrow garden to the front door. His en- 
counters with preliminary inquisitiveness were not even ye* 


94 The Heavenly Ladder 


over, for when the curve of the path brought him close to 
the clipped escallonia hedge that divided the garden of Tin- 
tagel from the garden of Gilead, the villa belonging to Cass 
Dale, the owner of it bobbed up and greeted him with 
boisterous cordiality. 

“Hallo, Lidderdale, I’m glad you haven’t disappointed our 
neighbour. She’s been into Rosemarket and bought you a 
magnificent cake. I hope you’ll drop in again and have tea 
with us soon. I won’t promise you a chocolate cake. Ha, 
ha, ha! But you won’t go empty. The missus will see to 
that. She said to me only this morning that you looked as 
if you wanted feeding up. But you mustn’t let Miss Horton 
do it all. You single men have to be careful, you know. 
Grand day for the time of year, isn’t it? I’m just putting 
in a few seeds.” 

“What, for parrots?” said Mark. 

Cass Dale twirled his yellow moustache and smiled 
broadly. 

“Come, come, you mustnt take umprage, Lidderdale, at 
a little bit of harmless chaff.” 

Inasmuch as she had to appear some time that afternoon, 
it was perhaps just as well, Mark thought, that Miss Horton 
chose that moment to do so. 

“Oh, how dy’e do, Vicar? I’m so glad you’ve come. So 
delighted. Good afternoon, Mr. Dale. What a lovely day! 
Real Cornish Riviera weather. Mind the mat, Vicar. One 
is apt to trip over it.” 

Mark wondered if this statement was based on statistics 
provided by Mr. Scobell. 

“You must excuse the room,” his hostess murmured, flit- 
ting about among the bric-a-brac and bamboo tables, like a 
large tropical bird. “We mustn’t speak too loud. The walls 
are so thin in these modern villas. I dare say you wonder 
how an artist can put up with it. But you know I am always 
hoping to find a suitable cottage. I only intended to spend 
a few weeks here, but now I really feel that I shall never 
have the heart to leave dear little Nancepean. Your coming 
here as vicar has made such a difference. It’s such a boon 
to get really definite religious teaching again. I assure you 


The Sunday School 95 


I was fast lapsing into paganism. I was indeed. Mind, 
Vicar, mind,” she screamed, “mind where you're sitting.” 

Mark nearly ricked his back in an effort not to sit down 
in the chair he had chosen. 

“My palette,’ she explained. “Oh yes, I know it’s dis- 
gracefully untidy of me to leave it lying about, but you know 
really I’m so cramped here. I suppose you never thought 
seriously of letting your old barn at the Vicarage as a 
studio ?” 

“T’ve never even thought about such a thing in joke,” 
Mark said decidedly. 

“Of course, you realize that it would make an ideal 
studio?” Miss Horton asked, temptation glittering like a 
jewel in her eyes. 

“T don’t agree with you at all. I don’t agree with you 
at all, Miss Horton,” Mark said hurriedly. 

Miss Horton shook a roguish finger at him in reproof, 
but mercifully at this moment Rover came in and changed 
the subject by wagging a large cowrie shell and a model in 
serpentine of Rose Head off one of the bamboo tables on 
the floor. 

“Rover! Rover! Lie down at once, you bad dog. Yes, 
I know you’re glad to see the Vicar, but you mustn’t wag 
your tail so energetically. Lie down, sir, when I tell you.” 

Miss Horton pressed her two hands firmly upon the collie’s 
back, and after a short resistance he collapsed upon the floor, 
his nose dangerously close to the lowest tier of the cake- 
table. 

“Are you fond of dogs?” she asked. 

“Yes, I’m very fond of them indeed,” Mark replied. “In 
fact, I’m thinking of getting one for the Vicarage.’ He 
had at that moment conceived a plan for driving Miss Hor- 
ton out of Nancepean by importing a ferocious Newfound- 
land that would attack Rover whenever he met him, and not 
only prevent Miss Horton’s ever coming near the Vicarage, 
but make her whole life in the open air one long anxiety. 

“T have a brother who breeds spaniels,’ she announced 
brightly. “I wonder if he’d give me one. I wonder. He 
might, you know. But it would have to be a great secret if 


96 The Heavenly Ladder 


I gave it to you, because, do you know, my brother is really 
quite mercenary about his dogs. He sells the puppies!” 

“T don’t care for spaniels,” Mark said as discouragingly 
as he knew how to. 

“Oh, not spaniels?” Miss Horton exclaimed. “But they’re 
so faithful.” 

“T’d just as soon keep a tame conger-eel,’’ Mark declared. 

“Oh, Mr. Lidderdale! Oh, Vicar, how can you say such 
a thing? Why, I think there’s nothing lovelier than a well- 
bred spaniel. Oh, do look at Rover’s expression of disgust.” 

“He’s smelling the cake,’’ Mark said. 

“How naughty you are! He’s not doing anything of the 
kind. He’s jealous. Do you know, that dog understands 
every word I say. Rover, do you want to go for a nice walk 
with your mother?” 

At this the collie leaped to his feet and walked round and 
round the room barking on one intolerable note. 

“No, you're not going just yet. Lie down! Good boy, 
lie down. Rover! Lie down, will you?” 

But Rover would not lie down until his mother had once 
again leaned heavily upon him and borne him to the floor. 

Perhaps a Great Dane would be more efficacious than a 
Newfoundland, Mark was thinking. But could he afford to 
keep such a large dog? Scarcely, and with the Prawles 
there were never any scraps. His sinister meditation was 
interrupted by Miss Horton. 

“You realize, of course,” she said, looking at him side- 
ways, “that you’re very paintable?” 

“T hadn’t realized it.” 

“Oh, very,” she declared. “Of course, skies are my job, 
as you know; but really when a person as paintable as you 
comes along I can hardly be expected to resist, can I?” 

“T really don’t know what you can do, Miss Horton. But 
you’re certainly not going to paint me.” 

“How like a man!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, isn’t that like a 
man?” | 

Mark was not clear why his last remark should be con- 
sidered so typically masculine, but as he much preferred to 
be considered one of an immense class than to be discussed 


The Sunday School 97 


as a particular specimen, he did not challenge the com- 
parison, | 

“Hasn’t anybody ever told you that you were frightfully 
paintable?” Miss Horton persisted. 

“Oh, lots of people,’ he replied. He had no hesitation in 
telling this lie. It seemed the only way to impress Miss Hor- 
ton with the hopelessness of her ambition. 

“And you never sat for anybody?” 

“Never,” he declared. “And I never will.” 

She sighed. 

“Skies are so difficult.” 

“T’m sure they are,” Mark agreed. “But at any rate they 
can’t refuse to sit. If I were a painter I should always 
choose subjects like skies and trees and mountains.” 

“You've never tried to paint yourself?” she asked, hope 
visibly rising again. 

Mark shook his head. 

“TI suppose you realize that lots of people have the gift 
without knowing it? You’ve got very artistic hands. Do 
you know I shouldn’t be at all surprised if you could paint 
very well. I wonder if you’d like me to give you a few 
lessons.” 

“T did have lessons once,” Mark said, who had by now 
not the least scruple in saying anything. “But the master, 
the master with whom I started told me that I should never 
make a painter.” 

“T think masters are apt to be too hasty in their judg- 
ments,’ she went on undaunted. “I wish you’d try again. 
I could easily lend you my palette and a few brushes 
Bei ey: 

“No, really it’s most kind of you, Miss Horton, but even 
if I had the talent I shouldn’t have the time.” 

“T want to consult you about my garden,” she said 
abruptly. “Mr. Scobell has kindly let me assume all re- 
sponsibility for the garden in front, and I want to have a 
real blaze of colour next summer. Great splashes! And I 
want your advice.” 

Mark wondered if Eve approached Adam like this in 
Eden. 


98 The Heavenly Ladder 


“But I know nothing about gardening.” 

“Oh now, come, Vicar, that is really rather a little fib. 
How can you say that, with your lovely garden at the Vicar- 
age?” 

“But I didn’t plant that,’ he said indignantly. 

“No, but your grandfather did, and I’m sure you must 
have inherited his tastes.” 

“You seem to think that I’m a kind of admirable Crich- 
ton,’ Mark exclaimed, and could have kicked himself for 
falling into the trap of talking about himself. 

“Well, do you know, I do think you’re very gifted,” Miss 
Horton replied at once; and as a preliminary to settling 
down for a really cosy and intimate chat, she lighted a ciga- 
rette. “You don’t object to women smoking?” she inquired. 

“T’ve never thought anything about it,’ Mark said, ob- 
stinately determined not to admit that he had considered 
women even generically. 

“And do get your pipe going,” she begged. “I do so like 
to see a man smoke his pipe. I can’t bear a man who doesn’t 
smoke.” 

Mark was tempted for a brief instant to declare that he 
had given up smoking; but he did not feel any confidence in 
being able to discourage Miss Horton by such a statement, 
and it would mean going without that delicious pipe after 
tea, which would be rather too much of a good thing. 

“Your pouch looks dreadfully tumbledown,” Miss Horton 
observed. “You badly want a new one.” 

“Oh, I have a whole drawerful of pouches at home,” Mark 
affirmed. “But I prefer an old pouch.” 

“T’m so glad to think that I can be of a little use to you 
on Sundays,” Miss Horton sighed. ‘What hymns would 
you like me to practise for next Sunday?” 

“T’m afraid I haven’t thought about them yet,” Mark 
replied. 

“TI was going to suggest that the kiddies should come in to 
see me on Saturday afternoon and go over their hymns for 
the next day. Do you think that would be a help?” 

“Well, really, you must decide that yourself, Miss Horton. 
Only I’d rather, if you don’t mind, that the Sunday school 


The Sunday School 99 


wasn’t made a bore for the children. I’d much rather they 
sang out of tune than have to practise singing as a task.” 

“Oh, you can rely on me not to make it that, Vicar,” she 
assured him. “Children are very fond of me. And that 
reminds me. What do you think I have got for you?’ 

“T can’t guess,” he said, feeling a little alarmed and re- 
calling jokes in comic papers about embroidered slippers for 
clergymen. 

“Two new pupils. Oh, look, Vicar, look! Do look at 
my ring! My smoke ring, I mean,” she explained with what 
Mark decided was definitely a coy giggle. “Yes, two new 
pupils,’ she went on. “Eddie and Frankie Scobell. Yes, 
as soon as their mother heard that we were going to have 
singing practice she told me that they might come. She’s 
anxious for them to learn the piano, and I’ve promised to 
teach them.” 

Mark was not so much pleased with Miss Horton’s cap- 
ture as he would have been if the two Scobell boys had been 
likely to contribute much in the way of personality to his 
Sunday school. But he did not feel that they would add 
anything except a volume of inattentive breath. 

“Your capture sounds very much like bribery,” he said 
severely. 

“Oh, but I’m so glad to do anything to help you in my 
small way. I do so believe in what you’re trying to give the 
people here, and I only hope that you won’t be disheartened 
by the way they respond. I don’t like to talk about myself, 
but I have so dreadfully wanted to have an opportunity to 
. tell you how much you have done for me personally. I was 
fast getting to look back on religion as something that be- 
longed to my extreme youth. I was...” 

Mark rose. 

“We shall have to talk about this another time, Miss Hor- 
ton. It’s getting dusk, and I want to be home before it’s 
quite dark. With all the rain we’ve been having lately some 
parts of the road between here and the Vicarage are under 
water. Thank you very much for your delicious tea, Miss 
Horton.” 


100 The Heavenly Ladder 


“Must you really go?” she sighed. “I'd offer to accom- 
pany you some of the way if I...” 

“Oh no, please, Miss Horton, the road is really not fit 
for a woman.” 

“Rover would have enjoyed a little run.” 

“Yes, but he wouldn’t be able to run a yard between here 
and the Vicarage. Jago’s cows are feeding all the way along 
the road, and they’re particularly down on dogs.” 

“Well, if you must go, you must. IT’ll walk down with 
you as far as the gate. I wish you’d been able to give me 
some advice about the garden. That blaze of colour...” 

“Nasturtiums. Nothing better than nasturtiums,’ Mark 
said quickly. ‘Good night, Miss Horton.” 

“There’ll be Mass to-morrow at eight, I suppose?” she 
asked, clutching at the last thread that linked him to her. 

“Yes, yes, of course. There’s always Mass at eight,’’ said 
Mark sharply. And slamming the gilded iron gate of Tin- 
tagel behind him he hurried away up through the village, the 
white cottages of which shimmered in the dusk. 

It was a wisht road at twilight from Nancepean to the 
Vicarage. He who must travel it passed through a gate and 
entered a sudden darkness made by the tall elms that over- 
shadowed Roscorla farm, from which he emerged to follow 
a deeply-rutted track along the bottom of a narrow valley. 
On the right the top of the steep slope might stand out clear 
against the green west, but on his left the night seemed to be 
pouring down faster and faster into this valley until soon 
it would brim over with darkness. The eeriest part of the 
road was about half-way along to the Vicarage, where the 
wide valley that led up from Church Cove into the heart of 
the Rhos was reached and a gurgling stream ran across the 
track, which had to be crossed by seven white stepping-posts. 
The noise of the water gave the wayfarer an impression that 
the transit was across a torrent that was capable of sweeping 
him away and rolling him over and over into the sea a mile 
or more away, although actually, even in mid-winter, the 
depth of the water was never much more than two feet. On 
the other side of the stream on a knoll of rank herbage 
stood the ruins of what might once have been a small farm- 


The Sunday School IOI 


house. Perhaps the spot was haunted by the strivings and 
losses and disappointments of bygone owners, or perhaps it 
was nothing more than its outward aspect of desolation, but 
even at noon of a fine day Mark would always quicken his 
footsteps here, and always in doing so would come unawares 
(although he knew it was there) upon a huge dome of 
granite bursting from the pasture by the roadside. He won- 
dered in calm moments how a geologist would explain the 
roundness and symmetry of this isolated outcrop, and in 
such a mood he would pat it as he might have patted a great 
benevolent beast, admiring the green and grey lichen that 
turned its surface into the likeness of a lizard’s scaly hide. 
At other times, as on this dusky walk back from tea with 
Miss Horton, he was filled with horror of this excrescent 
bulb of stone, and passing it hurriedly he would look back 
over his shoulder, because it was seeming impossible to be- 
lieve that anything so unusual could be content to stay 
where it was. 

The stone was known locally as the Devil’s A , and 
it was still the custom, on the way to gather limpets at the 
low tide of Good Friday, to salute it with a kick in passing. 
It was doubtful if anybody in Nancepean would have had the 
valour to do the same if he had to pass it on such an evening 
as this. The Devil? It was difficult to avoid being led away 
by Manichzus when one began to speculate upon the Devil. 
That was a specious heresy. The certainty with which the 
early church grappled with those tremendously logical aber- 
rations of the great heresiarchs was truly miraculous. Un- 
less one believed in the infallible guidance of Almighty God, 
how was such inevitably acute perception of error explicable? 
The Filtoque clause. Shallow critics laughed at the idea of 
splitting Christendom in two for the sake of barely two 
words. Learned ones scoffed because, long before the birth 
of Christ, Shu proceeded from Neb-er-Tcher and with 
Tefnut made a Trinity. Yet if the procession of the Holy 
Ghost had been denied to God the Son, where would be 
His Divinity by now? So long as the Filioque clause was 
retained in the Nicene Creed, one was able to feel that an 
avowed Arian at any rate could not be a bishop in the 





102 The Heavenly Ladder 


English Church. Was the present deadness of the Orthodox 
Church directly traceable to its failure to grasp the vital 
importance of insisting in the double procession? It might 
be. Not that modernism had made any headway in the 
Orthodox Church. On the contrary. But to deny that the 
Comforter proceeded equally from the Son and from the 
Father was not to know the Comforter. O TAPHTOPIKOZ 
The Paregoric. What tricks language could play! Absurd 
to think that the same Greek word could be used for 
a cough-medicine and for the Holy Ghost. The Devil? 
O AIABOAOZ The Slanderer. Of what? Of God’s pur- 
pose? It was merely ludicrous to perceive in that outcrop the 
likeness of the Devil’s rump mocking Heaven. And yet 
somehow all round the spot one was aware of Evil. It threw 
a chill upon the heart. It was the Panic. Perhaps that stone 
had been used in the abominable assemblies of witchcraft. 
The meeting-place of a Covin? The Devil’s hinder-quarters 
were always cold. They all testified to that. This was a 
likely part of the world for the debased forms of some 
ancient religion to linger. There was surely elemental evil 
hereabouts. But could evil be elemental? Was not that to 
admit it, coeternity with God? Manichzus again. “Who’s 
that shuffling toward me farther down the road?” Footsteps 
only half-human. Padded footsteps. Mark stopped and 
waited for a moment in the deep twilight, from which 
presently Toby Prawle materialized. 

“Good evening, Toby, you gave me quite a start.” 

“Wish you good evening, Mr. Lidderdale,” the little fur- 
tive man replied in a singsong voice like the rise and fall of 
a light wind across the path. 

“Did you have any luck on the beach to-day?” Mark in- 
quired. 

“T found Coastguard’s pipe he left on the cliff he didn’t 
rightly knaw where to. I belong taking it to him now. 
’Tis a handsome pipe wi’ silver band and all. Coastguard 
will be pleased to see his pipe again, I believe.” 

“Well, good night, Toby.” 

“Wish you good night, Mr. Lidderdale.” 

The little furtive man shuffled on toward the village, 


The Sunday School 103 


chuckling to himself in anticipation of the golden chinks in 
the blinds, to which he would put his red-rimmed eyes, and 
of the beers that Wilton the coastguard would stand him 
at the Hanover Inn to celebrate the rescue of his pipe. 

Mark was glad to be back in his room and found relief, 
even pleasure, in listening to Jennifer and Aunt Penelope 
preparing dinner, however much it might sound rather like 
the tuning-up of an infernal orchestra. Nor, when dinner 
was finally ready about an hour after it should have been, 
did the quality of it provide a nepenthe for so much pre- 
liminary tintinnabulation of glass and crockery. This eve- 
ning, too, Lily, who was being encouraged to suppose at the 
age of nine that she might be a parlourmaid at sixteen, 
dropped the tray on the threshold of the dining-room and 
added the lamentations of horns to the bassoons of Aunt 
Penelope’s reproaches and the squealing piccolos of her 
mother’s nervous fury. In spite of all this, Mark was sorry 
when it was time for the family to leave him alone in the 
house. He stood and watched from one of the great empty 
rooms their lantern, conjuring the huge shapes of trees 
from the darkness of the drive until at last it went bobbing 
out of sight down the valley—an ignis fatuus in the moonless 
night. 

“An igms fatuus?’ said Mark to himself, as he turned 
to leave the empty room and go downstairs to sit by the 
more profitable fire in his study. “That describes my own 
position as Vicar of Nancepean.” 

He reached out for the volume of Jacob Boehme in the 
toils of whose mystical net he was struggling; but he let it 
lie unopened on his knee and leaned back in his chair, 
pondering vacantly the great parasol of reflected lamplight 
on the ceiling. 

“Why should solitude have the power to reduce a man to 
a state of besotted inertia? Is the human will really de- 
pendent on the working of other wills all round it?” 

Mark pulled himself from his chair with an effort and 
went up to bed. His last thought just before going to sleep 
was that Miss Horton would be at Mass, and it was his 
first thought when he woke in the morning. His state of 


104 The Heavenly Ladder 


mind was a travesty of the state of mind of a lover—a 
kind of falling in hate. However, after the added gloom 
that Miss Horton gave to a raw grey morning, the rest of 
the day was fine; for not only did the actual clouds disperse 
before noon, but on his way to make some calls in the village 
after lunch Donald Evans shouted to him from the play- 
ground and asked if he could speak to him a minute after 
school. 

“T shall be somewhere in the village,” Mark shouted back. 
“Come along and find me when you’re let out.” 

They met outside Mrs. Pellow’s and walked back toward 
the inn like a pair of conspirators. 

“Do ’ee remember,” Donald asked, “when I told ’ee that 
Arthur Tangye wouldn’t mind if his mother beat him so 
long as he could come church and do the same as what I 
belong to do every Sunday °” 

Mark nodded. 

“T remember it well.” 

“T didn’t say no more to him,” Donald went on. “Be- 
cause it wasn’t no use to make him think that he was so 
grand we couldn’t get along without him.” 

“Quite right,’ Mark approved. “We church folk have 
got to make it quite clear that it’s what the others miss by 
not coming to church, not what we gain by their coming.” 

“Well, Arthur Tangye whispered to me this morning in 
school if he could speak to me when we come out. He said, 
‘Can I speak to ’ee when we come out, boy Donald?’ and I 
whispered back, ‘Yes, if you’ve a mind to, boy Arthur,’ and 
Miss Vivian banged both of us on the head with her ruler 
for talking in lessons. But when we come out and I said to 
boy Arthur I’d a good mind to put tin-tacks in the road so 
as she’d puncture her bicycle, because she were getting too 
fond of clouting anybody over the head with her darned old 
ruler, boy Arthur said he didn’t mind nothing how Miss 
Vivian clouted him, because his mother had said he could 
come to church sunday school if you’d a mind to have 
him.” 

“Bravo!” Mark exclaimed. 

“Yes, but wait a bit, Mr. Lidderdale, because that isn’t 


The Sunday School 105 


all. Mrs. Tangye said she were glad to send him and maid 
Sophie and maid Susie and maid Elsie so well, because she 
weren't going to be told by Ernie Hockin that the chapel 
was swept out a disgrace last week. If it wasn’t for the 
shilling a week, she said, she’d never put her foot to chapel 
again or leave any of her children go neither. She said just 
because anybody was poor, that didn’t say anybody to Nance- 
pean who’d a mind could trample on her. She wasn’t going 
to say nothing about Walter and Jimmie, because they was 
old enough to choose for theirselves, and if they was weed- 
ing for Mr. Stithian to Pentine they’d better stay as they 
was. But none of the rest of them should go chapel, and if 
Ernie Hockin said her sweeping was a disgrace she’d go 
straight to the Reverend Cass and ask him to rub his hands 
where he’d a mind to, and if he could find a speck of dust on 
his fingers she’d pay back the shilling that week out of her 
own money.” 

Donald stopped breathless and triumphant. 

“Well, I think that’s splendid news you’ve brought me,” 
Mark said. “Oh, by the way, Donald, Miss Horton has 
very kindly offered to give you all a singing lesson every 
Saturday evening at half-past five, so that you can practise 
the hymns.” 

Donald made a grimace. 

“Miss Horton can’t sing no better than an old shag.” 

“Donald, don’t talk like that about Miss Horton, or for 
that matter anybody else.” 

“Well, ’tis no good for Miss Horton to try and boss us 
about.” 

“She won’t try and boss you about.” 

“T know she will then. She belongs to be a regular old 
nuisance.” 

“Well, I don’t want to discuss Miss Horton now. I don’t 
mind if you go to practise or not, but if you want to have 
hymns you'll have to get Miss Horton to help you. I can’t 
play the harmonium.” 

“Dolly Masterman might have come and played. How 
didn’t ’ee ask her?” 


106 The Heavenly Ladder 


“T didn’t ask Miss Horton,” said Mark hurriedly. “She 
volunteered. Dolly Masterman didn’t volunteer.” 

“T daresay she didn’t know there was volunteering going 
around,’ Donald said. 

“Well, please drop the subject of Miss Horton, and don’t 
spoil your other good news by foolish grumbling. If your 
singing gets on, we can start a choir in church. Boys and 
girls both.” 

“Put the maids in surplices?”’ Donald queried in very 
doubtful accents. 

“Of course not,” Mark answered. ‘Who ever heard of 
such a thing?” 

“T’m glad,” Donald said with a sigh of relief. “They’re 
saucy enough now, but if they was put in surplices they’d 
be so proud as paycocks, and nobody could say a word to 
them more. Look see, there’s boy Arthur waiting by Pol- 
garth gate,” Donald exclaimed. “He’s waiting to know if 
you'll lev him come Sunday school.” 

The hero of the Tangye schism was a round little boy of 
ten, very like his father with a snub nose and freckled cheeks, 
but without his father’s red hair, his own colour taking 
after Mrs. Tangye’s washed-out yellow. He slid down from 
the gate of Polgarth farm and advanced slowly and shyly to 
greet Mark. His cheeks were crimson with embarrassment ; 
his big steadfast eyes were downcast; but his smile was so 
definite that it seemed really distinct from the rest of him 
and to possess an existence of its own like the Cheshire 
Cat’s, and to be able to project itself before him with an as- 
surance that its nominal owner, kicking one foot against the 
other and muttering inaudible replies to Mark’s questions, 
entirely lacked, so that Mark talked more to the smile than 
to Arthur himself. However, when he heard that he would 
be welcome at the school and that on the very next Sunday 
he should put on cassock and surplice to march in procession 
beside Donald in front of his Vicar, Arthur’s confusion left 
him. He offered a small grubby hand to be taken by Mark 
and stepped out proudly beside him, while Donald in an 
access of jubilation hopped on his whole leg half the way 
from Polgarth gate to the Hanover Inn. Here Arthur said 


The Sunday School 107 


good-bye, and went bouncing back to the village like a 
cricket-ball thrown in from the deep field. 

“Boy Arthur’s happy he’s coming to church,” said Donald. 

“And we're very happy to have him, eh?” said Mark. 

“T expect it'll mean a fight between him and Charlie 
Woods to-morrow going to school,’ Donald prophesied. 
“But Arthur won’t mind. He do dearly love fighting with 
Charlie Woods. Yesterday they fought because Charlie 
Woods pegged Arthur Tangye’s top with his new top and 
Arthur picked ’un up and throwed ’un into old Miss Las- 
siter’s pig bucket; and the day before they fought because 
Charlie was drinking at the pomp and Arthur come along 
and pomped hard so as the water spouted all over Charlie 
Woods and nearly drownded him. So Charlie Woods called 
Arthur a bad word and spitted at him. And then they was 
to it. But Charlie Woods he do hate church and Arthur do 
know that, and Arthur told me the first word Charlie said 
he’d belong to ponch him on the nose.” 

This youthful protagonist of the chapel who was likely to 
take offence at Arthur’s apostasy was the son of old Samuel 
Dale’s carter. 

Mark went back to the Vicarage much more cheerfully 
that evening after a jolly tea at the inn. To be sure, Mrs. 
Evans was pessimistic about the endurance of the young 
Tangyes. 

“They'll come just so long as their mother stays mad with 
Ernest Hockin, and after that she’ll take ’em away again so 
fast as she sent them.” 

“Now, don’t be discouraging, Mrs. Evans,” Mark laughed. 
“Let me have them for a month, and I'll guarantee to keep 
them for a year, and if I can keep them for a year I’ll hope 
to keep them for ever.” 

“T’ll be surprised if you have them come more than once,” 
Mrs. Evans declared sombrely. Then she added tartly: 
“And how’s Penelope Prawle and Jennifer looking after 
"ee ae 

“Oh, not too badly,’ Mark said. “Rather noisily, of 
course, but they do their best.” : 

Mrs. Evans tossed her head. 


108 The Heavenly Ladder 


“T warned you they was the laziest good-for-nothingest 
family for miles around, and I spoke truly, I believe.” 

“They’re not very competent,” Mark admitted. “But they 
might be worse.” 

Then Mrs. Evans went off in one of her sibylline moods, 
uttering dark ambiguities that might have prophesied any- 
thing from murder to the theft of his solitary napkin-ring. 

However, Mark was not going to be cast down by Mrs. 
Evans, and he spent a cheerful evening planning all sorts of 
devices to make his Sunday school the most interesting and 
original in the whole of England. With a Sunday school 
of ten scholars he was justified in introducing to Nancepean 
the stamp system he had wanted to introduce at Galton. But 
something else was required besides collecting attendances at 
Mass and Sunday school if one did not want to be accused 
of paying more attention to religious forms than to the prac- 
tical application of them to daily existence. Mark gave 
much thought to the invention of a system of recording be- 
haviour that should be proof against the encouragement of 
self-righteousness and that would not foster a deliberate en- 
deavour to be good for the credit they gained rather than 
for the love of goodness. He decided to order for each of 
his scholars a small wooden money-box, the key of which 
he should keep himself. He should explain to the class that 
these boxes represented their daily lives and that every week 
during the last hymn of Sunday school he should put into 
these boxes various coloured counters, each of which would 
represent some action of theirs, good or bad, either that he 
had noticed himself or that in some way or another had 
been brought to his notice. A white counter would repre- 
sent a good action, a black counter a bad one. A red counter 
would stand for an act of cruelty or unkindness bad enough 
to be recorded whether it was to an animal or to a grown-up 
person or to one of themselves. A yellow counter would 
indicate jealousy, and a green counter would be a compliment 
to the owner’s appreciation of the gift of life, whether by 
doing his work well or by playing hard or by enjoying the 
beauties of earth and sea and sky or simply by being happy. 
A purple counter would be a serious blot on the blues and 


The Sunday School 109 


greens, because it would mean that the possessor of it had 
displayed vanity and self-satisfaction. For good behaviour 
in church there would be blue counters, and any kind of 
dreariness, which would include bad behaviour in church, 
would be penalized with a brown counter. Of course, no 
child would know what counters had been dropped into his 
box until the Day of Judgment when the boxes would be 
opened and every child rewarded according to its deserts. 
Rewarded? ‘That was really a bad system. The moment a 
prize was given the whole value of the preliminary compe- 
tition was destroyed. In fact the quickness with which the 
word competition came first to his lips as a description of the 
business was itself an argument against rewards. There 
ought not to be any kind of competition. Yet how other- 
wise was the interest of the children to be maintained? Well, 
the reward would have to suggest itself when the boxes were 
opened on the Day of Judgment. He could manage the 
expense of the money-boxes and counters out of his own 
money, but he should have to beg the necessary equipment 
for the stamps. Whom should he ask? Mark decided upon 
a rich maiden lady to whose spiritual needs he had ministered 
at St. Cyprian’s. He wrote off to her that night, and having 
done so felt that he ought to invite Miss Horton to con- 
tribute something. She probably had such excellent inten- 
tions, and it would not be encouraging her unduly to ask 
her to make him a rainbow-coloured bag to contain the 
tokens. Ah, that was the very word for the counters. 
Tokens. And the rainbow bag should be a covenant of 
peace between Miss Horton and himself. 

Exciting plans will populate even so large and so empty 
a house as the Vicarage of Nancepean, and to-night Mark 
found it small and crowded and cosy. Why should not the 
two little Wilton girls make the ten scholars a dozen? His 
last plan before going to sleep was to visit the coastguard 
the following afternoon and press for his children’s atten- 
dance at the Sunday school. 

The coastguards’ cottages stood on the first rise of the low 
green cliffs that ran along the two miles of steep deserted 
beach between Nancepean and Rose Pool. A shingly track 


IIO The Heavenly Ladder 


ran down past the gate of Polgarth farm to what was called 
Nancepean Cove, though it was really nothing more than the 
end of the long beach beyond which the cliffs began to rise 
gradually to the savage heights of Pendhu. A windlass and 
the three pilchard boats of the Nancepean Fishing Company 
gave the spot a faint flavour of maritime industry which was 
enhanced by the flag-post on the grass platform in front of 
the neat white cottages, only one of which was inhabited 
nowadays. 

Wilton himself was a spare, swarthy man, whose ship- 
shape cottage might have been taken up and deposited in a 
battleship without enraging the commander by its inappro- 
priateness. His wife, a soft-cheeked little woman with a 
gentle voice, must be a domestic treasure, Mark decided, 
while Rosie and Maggie, the two little daughters of eight 
and seven, might have been two illustrations cut out of a 
book of nursery-rhymes, so pink their cheeks, so white their 
pinafores, so demurely did they sit side by side on the 
leather-covered sofa which took up the whole of one wall 
and a quarter of the floor of the little front sitting-room 
that was so like a cabin. Not a detail was wanting to the 
ideal picture of a bluejacket’s home from the faded photo- 
graphs of old ships to the windows tightly shut against the 
balmy air of this fine winter afternoon, from the four shells 
that whispered of the sea on the mantelpiece to the pots of 
geraniums and ferns that shut out the view of it from the 
window-seat. 

Mark and his host chatted for awhile about the lucky find- 
ing of his pipe by Toby Prawle, of the dullness of a coast- 
guard’s life after seeing so much of the world, and of Wil- 
ton’s bronchitis which was making it look as if he should 
presently have to ask for sick leave. 

“You see, sir, ’m a Greenwich man myself,” he told 
Mark. “And being a Greenwich man this here place don’t 
suit me. It were the same when I had the coast in Dawsit 
round Swanage way. This here broncthitus took me some- 
thing cruel. You know, it took hold of my broncthial chubes. 
Hoarse? Well, I reckon I was hoarse. I reckon it ’ud have 
frightened a raving to hear the way I croaked. I’m breaving 


The Sunday School Tt 


very hard again this afternoon. That’s the glass what’s done 
that. I often says, joking like, I says, “You can hear the 
wind a-getting up in my broncthial chubes,’ I says, and that’s 
a fact.” 

He tapped his chest and took a deep breath. 

“Hear it? That means we shall have a blow inside of the 
next twelve hours. Of course we don’t hyst the cone here, 
but if we did I’d hyst it without waiting for the telephone 
to come through from Portrose. You follow my meaning? 
It’s a kind of a warning.” 

“But how did you get on when you were at sea?” Mark 
asked in some astonishment. “Surely that was worse than 
Nancepean ?” 

“Worse? No!’ Wilton declared emphatically. “Why, 
you couldn’t have nothing worse than Nancepean not wher- 
ever you was. Not for broncthitus you couldn’t. And 
that’s a fact. Not as I’m grousing at the berth, and if we 
do lay too much in the wind’s eye, the bottom’s good, if you 
follow my meaning. But it’s the out and about night and day 
that gets me. Why, I wouldn’t have lost my pipe if I hadn’t 
coughed it out of my mouth the other night, and it was 
blowing so hard and so blooming dark I couldn’t find it 
nohow.” 

Mrs. Wilton was by now sending in the various constitu- 
ents of the tea by Rosie and Maggie, who, filled with the 
importance of the occasion, went back and forth from the 
little kitchen with processional solemnity. At last Rosie, 
the elder, appeared with the teapot itself. Her eyes were 
fixed with such intentness upon the balance of the teapot 
that she bumped into a chair. 

“Look where you’re steering, my lass,” her father called 
out. “Starboard! Starboard! Or you'll be on the rocks. 
That’s better. Way enough!” 

The teapot was deposited upon a thick mat of berlin wool, 
and the family gathered round the table. 

“I was wondering, Wilton,” said Mark when everybody 
was well loaded up with bread and jam, “I was wondering 
if you wouldn’t like your little girls to come to my Sunday 
school.” 


112 The Heavenly Ladder 


It struck him while he was speaking that it was odd how 
instinctively he should have turned to the father with the 
proposal instead of the mother. But the truth was that Mrs. 
Wilton did not seem to count for much apart from her 
husband. 

She was neat and pretty and competent, but one did not 
approach her directly even on a matter that conventionally 
might have been supposed to come within her province. 

“But they go to the Sunday school already,” said the 
coastguard. 

“To the chapel school,’ Mark reminded him. 

“Well, you see, sir, when we first come ashore here, there 
was only one school. And though I was never much of a 
one for Methodies or Roming Catholics, I didn’t like the 
notion of the kiddies mounching around of a Sunday after- 
noon, and so I made the best of it.” 

Then Maggie, blushing hotly and gulping down a large 
lump of bread and jam, testified: 

“Please, I’d like to go to church school, daddy.” 

Her father stared at her in amazement at such a pre- 
cocious knowledge of her own mind. It did not seem to 
displease him, however, for, pushing back his chair, he 
slapped his leg and said: 

“Would you now and all, and how mought that be, my 
lass?” 

“And Rosie would like to go to church school, too,” 
Maggie continued firmly. 

The coastguard planted his hands on his knees and leaned 
across the table to examine this strange new daughter of his. 
As for Rosie, she swallowed nervously once or twice and 
sat silent, her eyes wide open with alarm at the possible 
effect upon their father of her little sister’s declaration. 

“And so you’d like to go to church school as well?” he 
demanded, swinging round to confront his elder daughter. 

Rosie gave him what is called a sickly smile and expelled 
from her lips the wraith of an affirmative. 

But Maggie was more explicit. 

“T’d like to go because Elsie Tangye’s going next Sunday, 


The Sunday School 113 


and Rosie would like to go because Susie Tangye’s going 
next Sunday.” 

“Polly,” said the coastguard, turning to his wife, “they 
pair on ’em can both go next Sunday.” 

“Of course, if they come to the church school,” Mark 
put in, “they'll have to come to church too.” 

“Oh, but it’s such a long way,” Mrs. Wilton put in. “We 
did manage to get down for the Harvest Home, but it 
makes everything so late of a Sunday. The dinner and all 
I mean. And Wilton don’t like it if his dinner’s late.” 

“Surely the children can come along with the others,” 
Mark argued. 

“Of course they can,” the coastguard declared. “In a 
convoy.” 

The faint objection raised by his wife was quite enough 
to make him take up a strong attitude in the matter. 

Maggie clapped her hands gravely. 

“T’m glad,” she cooed, and filling her mouth with an even 
larger piece of bread and jam than usual, she sat munching 
in a stolid ecstasy. 

As Mark walked home he kept counting up to himself 
his scholars and subtracting his captures from the chapel 
school. It had been twenty-five to four last Sunday. Next 
Sunday it would be seventeen to twelve. As a matter of 
fact it was actually sixteen to thirteen, because Willie, the 
youngest Tangye, aged three, insisted on accompanying the 
brothers and sisters with whom his short life had made him 
familiar rather than those comparatively distant and almost 
unknown kinsmen, Walter and Jimmie, who were both more 
than ten years older than himself. Willie Tangye did not 
add much to the scholarship of Mark’s school, added noth- 
ing, indeed, except a certain amount of cubic space in globu- 
lar form and a capacity for breathing more heavily than any 
child Mark had ever heard. 

The news of the secessions from chapel had moved 
Nancepean profoundly; and when Mark was arranging the 
order of his solemn entry from the sacristy it was hard 
work to keep the children from chattering about the sensa- 
tion they had created. 


II4 The Heavenly Ladder 


“Mr. Lidderdale,” chanted Arthur’s high and intensely 
earnest voice. “Mr. Lidderdale, when we come out of our 
cottage to walk down, old Miss Lassiter come right out of 
her door and stood and looked at us.” 

“And she shook her stick at us and cursed us,’ Susie 
gabbled. 

“And old Mr. Dale, the Reverend Cass’s father, stood in 
the middle of the road and shouted out: ‘What’s all this 
mane?’ ”’ Arthur went on. 

“All right, Arthur, but don’t tell me now,” Mark said. 
“Wait until Mass is over, and do mind you don’t fall over 
your cassock.” 

“?Tis too long,” said Arthur. 

It was indeed—about a foot too long—and would have 
given the appearance of a sack race to the priest’s entrance 
if the cassock of Donald, the other acolyte, had not been at 
least two feet too short. 

“Now, silence!” Mark demanded. ‘Go in, the choir! 
Elsie Tangye and Maggie Wilton first. Then Susie Tangye 
and Rosie Wilton. Then Sophie Tangye by herself, and 
then Eddie and Frank Scobell. Get along; why don’t you 
start, Elsie and Maggie? Can’t you hear the harmonium?” 

“°Tisn’t maid Elsie and maid Maggie who won’t go,” 
said Susie Tangye. “’Tis Sophie don’t want to walk in by 
herself. She’s afraid. The foolish thing!” 

Susie, round-faced as her brother Arthur and of the same 
colouring, pointed a finger at her elder sister, who was 
plump with a complexion like milk and the brightest red 
hair of the family. Sophie turned away and hid her head 
in shame. 

“But, my dear child, you’re the biggest girl in the choir. 
That’s why I told you to walk by yourself,’ Mark said. 

“T don’t want to walk by myself,” said Sophie, trembling 
on the verge of tears; for she was soft and melting and 
feminine and to her younger sister as a Persian cat to a 
Siamese. 

“Go on then,” said Susie contemptuously. “Do ’ee walk 
with maid Rosie and Ill walk by myself.” 

Here the lips of Rosie Wilton, who had set her heart on 


The Sunday School II5 


walking in beside Susie, began to tremble. Mark was in 
despair of ever reaching the chancel. He was on the point 
of setting down the chalice and paten in order to rearrange 
the whole procession, when Arthur Tangye tripped over his 
cassock, and in his effort to save himself from falling pro- 
pelled his sister Susie through the sacristy door into the full 
view of the congregation. 

“Quick, quick!” cried Mark. “You’ve started now.” 

Maggie Wilton, the blood of seamen in her veins, grappled 
with the emergency, and dragging Elsie Tangye in her wake, 
followed close on the heels of Susie, whose delicious laugh- 
ter at her mishap rose like silvery bells above the droning 
of the harmonium. Sophie and Rosie forgot to weep and 
stepped out boldly, with the Scobell boys close behind them. 
It would have been a triumphant Mass if Tom Pascoe had 
not deliberately played every hymn wrong and if Mark had 
not found himself wondering why Winnie Pellow had not 
been allowed to join the choir. 

As soon as the service was over Mark tackled the organist 
about his behaviour. 

“If the hymns was wrong,” said Tom Pascoe sulkily, “it 
weren’t my fault. Miss Horton took it on herself to have 
a choir practice and never said nothing to me about the 
hymns until five minutes before church began. I belong 
to choose the hymns. If Miss Horton’s going to choose ’em, 
lev the woman play them.” 

Mark did not wait to consider the policy of getting rid of 
Tom Pascoe like this, but said at once: 

“Very well, Pascoe, you can consider that this is the last 
service at which you will play.” 

“You can’t get rid of me like that,” the organist retorted. 
“I’m paid five pound a year by the churchwardens to play 
twice every Sunday, and ’tis for they who pays me to give 
me notice fitty.” 

“William John!” Mark called out angrily. 

The churchwarden advanced sheepishly. 

“I don’t require Tom Pascoe’s services any more. How 
much is he owed?” 

“We belong to pay him at Easter,” said William John. 


116 The Heavenly Ladder 


“Very well, pay him up to Easter. But he won’t play at 
another service.” 

“Oh, come now, Mr. Lidderdale, that’s being a bit too 
hasty,” said William John. “I don’t believe Tom meant to 
put ’ee out for the purpose.” 

But he said no more, for his coat was violently jerked by 
his wife. 

“Was there ever such a man for talking?” she exclaimed 
fiercely. ‘How don’t ’ee do what the Vicar says and lev 
Tom Pascoe and such like look after theirselves. A proper 
churchwarden you do be!” 

Mark turned away and ran to overtake Mrs. Pellow, who 
was hurrying out of the churchyard gate. 

“Aren’t you going to let Winnie sing in the choir?” he 
asked. 

She looked at a distant horizon and answered in accents 
as remote as her gaze. 

“Oh no, thank you, Mr. Lidderdale. I don’t care to leave 
Winnie sit so far away from me. Besides, the maid is too 
shy for singing.” 

“But, Mrs. Pellow,” Mark begged, “just when the choir 
has been started, surely you aren’t going to be the only 
mother who keeps her little girl away from it. You make 
it so hard for me.” 

“T believe there’s plenty and more than plenty to the 
choir,” said Mrs. Pellow obstinately. “And I’d rather Win- 
nie stayed with me.” 

“Aren't you going to let her come to Sunday school 
alone?’ Mark asked. 

“Oh, we'll see, we'll see,” said Mrs. Pellow more remotely 
than ever. 

However, in spite of Mrs. Pellow’s evident annoyance 
over something Mark must have done to offend her, Winnie 
did come to Sunday school that afternoon. The stamp- 
albums and the stamps had not yet arrived, but Mark had 
his money-boxes ready, the presentation of which created 
considerable interest, not to say excitement, among the chil- 
dren. Miss Horton was not allowed to come to the Parish 
Hall until the actual lesson was over. Mark did not feel 


The Sunday School cy; 


that he should be able to talk to the children at all success- 
fully with Miss Horton at such close quarters. 

“You'll leave us go out when the chapel school goes out, 
won't ’ee?” Donald begged. 

“Why, I thought you liked to let them get ahead,’ Mark 
said with a smile. 

“Only when we was so few,” Donald explained. “There 
won’t be above two or three more than us this afternoon, 
and perhaps not that, because Katie Hockin and May Woods 
both ate something to Rosemarket yesterday afternoon and 
had the belly-ache all this morning and couldn’t go chapel.” 

“Now then, children, are you ready?’ Miss Horton asked, 
her hands poised like kestrels above the keys. “Very well, 
then. Now show the Vicar how loudly you can sing.” 


We are but little children weak! 


One would never have suspected it, Mark thought, from 
the lusty bawling that rattled the windows of the Parish 
Hall. 


A—A—a—a—men! 


“T reckon if anyone passed up along or down along while 
we was singing,” Donald said, “he must have been skeered 
out of his life to hear such a noise. I never heard so much 
noise come from the Parish Hall in all my life.” 

“T did once,” Arthur Tangye piped. 

“Oh, you never didn’t, boy Arthur,” his sister Susie pro- 
tested. 

“Yes, I did then,’ Arthur chanted, his cheeks all flushed 
with the urgency of establishing a fact. “There was more 
noise when Sir Henery Vyell come over to talk to the Union- 
ists and the Liberals wouldn’t lev him speak. Because 
Charlie Woods and me thought they was fighting inside, 
and he climbed up on my back and looked through the win- 
dow, and they was only hollering, and I left him fall with a 
bomp, and when he got up he called me a darned old 
Unionist, and I hit ’un and then he hit me, and then we hit 
each other for some long time while they was hollering in- 


118 The Heavenly Ladder 


side, and Granfa Hockin come past and asked us if we 
thought we’d go to Heaven, and when I turned around to 
answer him Charlie Woods hit me on the ear, and I was so 
mad I chased ’un round the Hall, and he run bomp into 
Granfa Hockin so as he nearly fell over.” 

These circumstantial details greatly impressed his audi- 
ence, who, Mark included, listened to him spellbound until 
Miss Horton interrupted: 

“Come, come, children, don’t gossip. Hymn number three 
hundred and thirty-seven. There's a friend for little 
children.” 

At the end of the fourth verse Donald called out: 

“Hark, listen! they’re coming out of chapel!” 

The church scholars forgot all about the hymn in their 
anxiety to triumph over their rivals, and Miss Horton was 
left singing alone in a quavering voice: 


There’s a song for little children 
Above the bright blue sky, 

A song that will not weary, 
Though sung continually, 

A song which even Angels 

Can never, never sing. 


“Finish the hymn with this verse,’ Mark said to Miss 
Horton. 
She struggled breathlessly with the last two lines: 


They know not Christ as Saviour, 
But worship Him as King. 
Amen. 


“All right,” Mark said. “You can go.” 

He did not think that much would be gained by keeping 
them back to say the Grace of Our Lord at a moment of 
such impatience, and as they rushed outside to demonstrate 
their force to the scholars of the chapel Sunday school, he 
made up his mind to put a green counter in each money-box 
next Sunday and thereby mark his appreciation of their zest 
in life. 


CHAPTER VII 
CANDLEMAS 


ARK had been intending to pay a call upon Cass Dale 

and his wife some time during the week, but after 
what might be considered such a successful display of poach- 
ing he was afraid of appearing to triumph over his rival, 
and the visit was postponed. Nevertheless chance brought 
about a meeting between himself and the minister, brought 
it about, too, in a way that gave it a peculiar significance, 
and in some respects a peculiar poignancy. Mark had taken 
advantage of a fine day after the gale, which Wilton the 
coastguard had foretold and which had blown with fury for 
the better part of three days and nights, to go for a long 
walk. He chose the two miles of desolate beach that lay 
between the coastguards’ cottages and the Rose Bar, the 
bank of fine shingle that divided the Atlantic from the Rose 
Pool. Generally when he chose this direction he took the 
grassy path along the low cliffs above the beach; but to-day 
he wanted to be as near as he could to the huge waves which, 
like combers on a tropic beach, broke here at regular inter- 
vals with all the might of the Atlantic in the thunderous 
afterswell of the gale. Nowhere that Mark knew did the 
waves of the sea roll in so proudly from the deep as when 
they broke upon this beach, nowhere did they show so clear 
and cold a green as when, with arched necks and spumy 
jaws, they sprang like dragons at the land. Gradually, how- 
ever, as he plodded across the soft slope of the shingle, the 
impression of ferocity vanished from his picture of these 
slow-breaking waves. They seemed rather to be flinging 
upon earth the treasures of the ocean, fragments from 
fathomless palaces of pearl and alabaster, of malachite and 
jade and lapis-lazuli, the shattered mirrors of mermaids and 
the unloosed silver girdles of the Oceanides. The hours he 


II9 


120 The Heavenly Ladder 


had spent upon this beach twenty years ago took possession 
of the present, and there was not a rocky conformation at 
the base of the cliff nor even a tress of seaweed that did not 
offer itself to his imagination with the transcendental reality 
youth perceives beyond the outward form of the commonest 
object. At last in this fanciful mood he reached the Rose 
Bar where the eye of youth was not needed to enhance the 
scene, nor the mind of youth to thrill to the roar of the 
leonine waves as they crashed down upon the shingle to the 
left of him, while to the right the tideless mere lapped at 
the same shingle as quietly as a kitten, hardly fifty yards of 
beach separating the two waters at high tide. Mark wan- 
dered along the banks of the Pool which, on the far side 
steep and wooded to the water’s edge, ran level here with a 
flat stretch of low-lying meadows. He looked across at the 
lonely farmhouse on the green cusp of high land that divided 
the two creeks of the great heart-shaped mere, and thought 
how, if plans made long ago on summer afternoons where 
he was walking now had come into being, he and Cass Dale 
would be farming that promontory, partners for life. He 
decided to revisit another haunt of theirs in the old days. 
A few yards beyond the brake of reeds and cushions of 
spongy moss in which the waters of the creek faded out 
there was a forsaken orchard of ancient cherry-trees that 
overshadowed the ruins of a cottage and a great slimy water- 
wheel, the stiff joints of which no longer responded to the 
attentions of a stream tumbling down from the high ground 
through a narrow and rocky bed overarched with brambles 
and in summer plumed with ferns. 

It was the first of February, early enough in the year to 
congratulate oneself on finding an unusual number of prim- 
roses in bloom on the sheltered banks which had once 
marked the boundaries of the mill garden. Mark had set 
himself the pleasant task of gathering a nosegay, when a 
shadow crossed the pale flowers, and, looking up, he saw 
Cass Dale himself standing just where he and Cass Dale 
had gathered flowers and dreamed dreams and made plans 
and frightened each other with stories of the monster that 
lived in the Pool and had an unpleasant habit of putting out 


Candlemas 121 


an arm and dragging down to the depths any wayfarer 
belated upon the banks of its abode. 

“Why, I was just thinking about you, Cass,” he said. 

“And I was thinking about you, Lidderdale,’ the other 
replied. 

“How we used to love this place, eh?” said Mark. 

“T wasn’t thinking of that,’ the minister replied sullenly. 
“T was thinking I’d warn you not to go against me too far, 
Lidderdale. I haven’t said a word as yet, but if you’re 
going to make religion in Nancepean a competition between 
you and me, I’ll have to look after my own side. You can’t 
expect me to sit down under it. I’ve got a name to keep in 
these parts, you know.” 

“I’m afraid I don’t quite see what your name has to do 
with it,” Mark replied. “I presume you’re alluding to the 
fact that some of the Nancepean children have changed their 
Sunday school. Well, they did it of their own accord, for 
you know as well as I do that the children go their own way 
in Cornwall.” 

“Yes, but there’s ways and ways of getting them. You 
won't try and tell me you converted them fair and square 
by your preaching. It was that Christmas tree of yours 
that started it. As long as they think they’ll have a better 
time by going to church than by going to chapel, you’ll keep 
them, Only, I don’t call that any kind of a way to bring 
children to Christ Jesus. I call that buying them. And 
nothing less. But if it’s to be treat against treat and enter- 
tainment against entertainment—well, there’s plenty of time 
to see who’s going to win at that game. Though I’d sooner 
not have done it in that way.” 

“You seem to forget, Cass, that I’m just as sure as you 
are that my faith is the right faith. You can’t seriously 
suppose that I’m going to sit still and watch you take entire 
charge of the religious life of Nancepean. I’m sorry you’ve 
tackled me like this, especially here in this orchard where 
you and I once thought alike about a lot of things. If 
Almighty God puts it into the hearts of the children to 
worship in His Church, you cannot expect me to forbid 
them.” 


122 The Heavenly Ladder 


“Aye, if He puts it into their hearts and not their 
stomachs,” Cass retorted bitterly. 

“But, Cass, I don’t understand what you want me to do.” 

“T want you to play fair.” 

“T am playing fair.” 

“Tt isn’t playing fair to have all this jiggery-pokery with 
stamps and to turn a child’s life into a game of tiddly-winks 
with a lot of coloured counters. Stand up and preach the 
Gospel like a man. Don’t turn religion into a newspaper 
competition.” 

Mark laughed. 

“You really can’t expect me not to try to make my Sunday 
school attractive by any means I can think of. My stamps 
and counters are a good deal more practical than the mawk- 
ish tales you shower on them for prizes. There aren’t 
going to be any prizes in my school. That’s where you'll 
have a chance of catching up.” 

“Catching up?” Cass repeated, reddening with annoyance. 
“Tt’ll be some long time before you’re so far ahead of me 
as all that. But why do you pretend you aren’t trying to 
tickle the children’s fancy? What’s all this about giving 
them candles to-morrow morning? Do you want to turn 
your church into a grocer’s shop?” 

“To-morrow is the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed 
Virgin Mary, commonly called Candlemas. The congrega- 
tion and choir will go in procession round the church with 
lighted candles in order to symbolize the entry of the Light 
of the World into the Temple at Jerusalem. You’ll re- 
member the verse from the Song of Simeon. To be a light 
to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of Thy people 
Israel.” 

“Well, I call such behaviour in the House of the Lord 
rank tomfoolery,” Cass declared. 

“My dear Cass, whatever you call it can’t make much 
difference to my congregation. I only tried to explain to 
you the reason of the candles being given out to-morrow 
morning, so that you shouldn’t think I was plotting to entice 
the children away from you with playthings and treats.” 

Mark tried to see his old friend as a boy and to fancy that 


Candlemas 123 


they were arguing together now in this dim cherry-orchard 
about the proper eleven to represent England at cricket 
instead of the varieties of religious observance. Unfor- 
tunately, his companion was by no means willing to be 
retrojected into the past, but on the contrary seemed in- 
clined to insist to the full upon the position he had won for 
himself in the present. Even if Cass did allow for a brief 
moment the personal relation between them to be revived, 
he always assumed the airs of a senior toward a new boy 
who must first be taught that he is an intruder and learn to 
accept that position before he can expect his comments to 
be listened to. When Mark tried to speak with the voice 
of the Church, Cass merely resented it as an unjustifiable 
exhibition of personal conceit and made it perfectly clear 
that he was the only one who possessed any excuse for 
displaying that. 

“It’s a pity,’ Mark said at last, “that you and I can’t build 
up an edifice of goodwill on the foundations we laid for it 
as children. But by the way you're talking this afternoon I 
fear that our friendship is as much a broken-down affair as 
this wheel on which the water drips as ineffectually as words 
on our friendship. Which way are you going home?” 

“Oh, I’ve one or two calls to make in this direction, and 
I must be getting along,” Cass muttered. 

“Our meeting has not led to much,” said Mark sadly. 

“Tt has led to a good deal, if you’ll be warned in time. I 
bear you no ill will, Lidderdale ; but from the moment I see 
that you intend to fight I shall hit first and hit hard.” 

They parted, and as Mark walked back, taking this time 
the cliff path above the lonely beach, he wondered which 
should serve as a symbol of the Church in Nancepean, the 
cliffs or the sea. It would depend upon one’s mood. Some- 
times it would be more natural to find a prototype of the 
Church in these stolid green cliffs which year in and year 
out stood firm against the assaults of that glittering mass of 
water. Sometimes one would derive a great sense of se- 
curity from the ability of such an unpretending line of cliffs 
to resist as they did. It would confirm one’s belief in the 
power of normality to defeat extravagance. But at other 


124 The Heavenly Ladder 


times these stolid green cliffs would present themselves to 
the imagination as typical of indifference and complacency ; 
then the emerald of the arched waves would make the dull 
grass appear contemptible, and the only spiritual effort worth 
while would be to thunder against them with the voice of 
authority and to wither them with the salt spume of reality 
and finally to break them down and overwhelm them with 
the glittering immensity of the Divine purpose. 

When Mark reached the village he decided to look in at 
Miss Horton’s and see how the choir practice was going on. 
He thought, too, that it would be a good opportunity to 
rehearse once more with Donald and Arthur the distribu- 
tion of the blessed candles before Mass. He had not arrived 
half-way up the zigzag path of Tintagel when Miss Horton 
appeared in the front door waving violently at him not to 
come any farther. Mark hesitated to obey Miss Horton 
like this; but when he continued on his way he saw that he 
must stop unless he meant to attract the attention of the 
whole village, for she was dancing about like a ferret out- 
side a rabbit burrow. 

“T don’t in the least want to come in, Miss Horton,” he 
called to her. “I simply thought I would ask as I was going 
by how the choir practice was going?” 

“Oh, quite all right, Vicar. Quite all right, thank you,” 
Miss Horton replied excitably. “Everything is most en- 
couraging, and every single child has turned up. You will 
be glad to hear that Winnie Pellow has come with the rest. 
I spoke seriously to her mother.” 

Mark turned away. He could see the faces of his scholars 
pressed against the window-panes of Miss Horton’s sitting- 
room like children outside a confectioner’s shop, and he did 
not want to distract them by his visit. 

It was Mark’s custom every Saturday night to eat a cold 
supper, which was left ready for him by his attendant family 
before they wént away early in the afternoon to put their 
own cottage in order for the Sabbath. He had got into the 
habit of not sitting down to this lonely meal until long after 
his usual hour. This evening it was after half-past nine 
before he put down his book and went into the dining-room. 


Candlemas 125 


He had just lifted one of the plates that were laid upon 
the viands like shields upon a hero’s pyre, when the front- 
door bell rang loudly. Without actually turning pale, Mark 
was as nearly being very much frightened as he had ever 
been since taking up his residence at the Vicarage. The 
echoes of the ringing seemed to repeat themselves endlessly 
from the empty rooms and the corridors and the uncarpeted 
stairs. While he was wondering who it could possibly be 
that would have come along that lonely valley to disturb 
him at this hour, the bell pealed again more loudly than 
before, and Mark, wishing that he had not taken off his 
boots and put on a pair of very flaccid slippers, braced him- 
self to open the door. There, bobbing about in her nervous- 
ness like a benighted bird, stood Miss Horton. 

“What on earth is the matter?” Mark asked crossly. 

“We can sing Mass to-morrow. We can sing Mass,” 
Miss Horton proclaimed breathlessly. “The children have 
been practising like little bricks, and as soon as I’d finished 
my supper I hurried along to tell you. Isn’t it wonderful? 
Rover! Where are you? Good dog! Lie down quietly, 
there’s a good boy. He was so excited at coming out with 
me like this. But really I was quite glad of his company. 
It is such an eerie road. Do you know once I felt impelled 
to paint Pedn Jowl... .” 

“Paint what?’ Mark exclaimed. 

“That big stone like an elephant that bulges up suddenly 
beside the track. I found in a guide-book that it is called 
Pedn Jowl.” 

“It’s called something quite different outside guide-books,” 
Mark contradicted. 

“Aren’t you going to ask me in, Vicar?” 

“But I’m just in the middle of my supper,” he objected. 

“Oh, why do you let those Prawles keep you waiting so 
late?” 

“They went home after lunch. It’s my own fault,’ Mark 
said. 

“Nobody in the house to look after you?” Miss Horton 
exclaimed. “Now really I do think that is very naughty of 
you, and most neglectful, what’s more. Oh dear, I wish I 


126 The Heavenly Ladder 


could spare the time to come and look after you properly. 
You know that for a painter I’m really very domestic, and, 
though I oughtn’t to say it, really a most capable house- 
keeper.” 

While the conversation jigged like an ill-trimmed bicycle 
lamp, Mark was trying to make up his mind to invite Miss 
Horton to come in. He did not want her in the house at 
this hour of the night; but he was afraid that what was 
nothing more than inhospitality might be interpreted by her 
as the cowardice of prudery, and he was unwilling to admit 
the possibility of such an emotion in the circumstances. If 
the impersonal view he took of Miss Horton was ever to be 
brought home to her, he must not allow her to suppose for 
a moment that he could be embarrassed by the prospect of 
her company at any hour of the night. At the same time he 
must make it perfectly clear that such visits were unwelcome 
because they disturbed his—what?—his reading—his pro- 
found and concentrated study of mystical theology. 

“Shall I stir up the salad?” Miss Horton suggested eagerly 
when she was seated in an armchair by the empty grate in 
the dining-room and Mark was engaged in swallowing down 
his supper as fast as he could. 

“No, thank you, Miss Horton.” 

“It looks so sodden.” 

“T like sodden salads.” 

“Shall I cut you some more bread ?” 

“No, thank you, Miss Horton.” 

“You don’t eat enough bread. I remember I was once 
told that the French were the most intellectual Europeans 
because they ate so much bread.” 

“Such generalizations are always rash and usually wrong,” 
Mark snapped. 

“Are you sure that the junket is all right? It looks so 
extremely dusty.” 

“Please, Miss Horton, if you’re going to fuss over my 
eating and drinking as if I were a strange pet, I shall ask 
you to go and sit in the study until I’ve finished. I hate 
being fussed over. If the junket is dusty, what does it 
matter? Everything is more or less dusty, but it happens 


Candlemas 127 


to show more on a junket than on some things. Tell me 
about the choir practice, because 1 mustn’t interrupt my eve- 
ning’s work. I’m having a stiff time with the Mysterium 
Magnum of Jacob Boehme.” 

“Tell me about it,” said Miss Horton, with a greedy, in- 
deed an almost libidinous interest. 

“T can’t possibly tell you over a supper-table about one of 
the most complicated expressions of human speculation. Be- 
sides, I want to hear about the choir practice. If you don’t 
hurry up and tell me about the choir practice, I shall begin 
to think that it was merely an excuse to come and disturb 
me at this ridiculous hour of the night.” 

“T thought you’d be so glad to hear that the children had 
been learning to sing Mass,” Miss Horton sighed woefully. 
“But you seem quite irritated over it.” 

“I’m very glad indeed to hear about it,’ Mark said. 
“What was irritating me was your refusal to tell me any- 
thing about it.” 

“Of course, we chose the simplest plainsong. You know. 
I be-liceeve in one-ne-ne Go-o-d. You know.” 

Mark repressed an impulse to make the sort of grimace 
one makes when somebody scrapes a knife on a plate and a 
secondary impulse to laugh loudly at Miss Horton’s quaver- 
ing chant. 

“We are ready with the Ninefold Kyrie, the Creed, the 
Sanctus, the Agnus Dei, and the Gloria,” Miss Horton an- 
nounced brightly. “And now all I hope is that Tom Pascoe 
won't make himself unpleasant about it.” 

“Why should he make himself unpleasant? He brought 
his dismissal on himself by his behaviour last Sunday.” 

“Yes, I know; but it appears from what they tell me in 
the village that he declines to accept his dismissal at your 
hands.” 

“Does he?” Mark exclaimed, flushing darkly. “We’ll see 
about that to-morrow. And now please, Miss Horton, you'll 
really have to leave me to my work. It’s impossible to 
concentrate on the speculative subtleties of mystical theology 
if I begin to think about that rascal Tom Pascoe. By the 
way, what hymn are we having for the procession?” 


128 The Heavenly Ladder 


’ 


“Six hundred and eleven,” said Miss Horton enthusiasti- 
‘cally, “Hail to the Lord who comes. It’s the only one in 
Ancient and Modern for the Feast of the Purification.” 

“Yes, that’s all right,” Mark said. “I hope that some of 
the grown-ups will walk round the church with the children. 
It’s a pity in one way that you'll be playing. You could 
have set a good example. Well, I won’t invite you into the 
study, Miss Horton, because I really must do a little reading 
before I go to bed.” 

Mark escorted her to the door, trying to make his action 
appear as much as possible like a polite solicitude for the 
parting guest and as little as possible like the determination 
with which a dog expels a hen from the front lawn. 

The following morning, when Mark, vested in purple 
cope, was giving his last instructions to the children upon 
the ceremony of distributing the blessed candles, he looked 
round for Arthur Tangye, who was not in the sacristy, and 
asked where he was. 

The assembled children gazed at one another, each with a 
question in its wide eyes. 

“Boy Arthur couldn’t come,’ Susie Tangye said at last. 

“Why not?” 

“Mother wouldn’t leave him come.” 

“Why not?” 

There was a fresh silence, and the girls blushed. 

“Has he been naughty?’ Mark pressed. 

“No, he hasn’t been naughty,” said Susie, and this time 
she giggled in her embarrassment. 

Mark had to give it up, because at this moment William 
John Evans appeared in the sacristy, a cloud of indignation 
wreathing his usually genial countenance. 

“Mr. Lidderdale, what’s all this about marching round 
the church carrying lighted candles? Darn ’ee, ’tis all very 
well for children to do so, but you can’t expect a grown-up 
sensible man to behave so foolish. ’Tisn’t in reason. And 
will ’ee come out and settle who’s going to play the har- 
monium? There’s Tom Pascoe sitting at it and won’t budge 
for no man, he says, and Miss Horton making faces at him 
fit to frighten a pig over a stile.” 


Candlemas 129 


The last simile of the churchwarden turned Susie Tangye 
into a fountain of laughter. It flowed from her in a silvery 
stream out of the sacristy into the nave, flowed along every 
aisle, filled the transepts, and washed with music the darkest 
and dustiest corners of the church. Donald, scandalized at 
the outburst, frowned at his father. 

“You'd never dare to talk like that if mother was by to 
hear ’ee,” he said. 

“Tf you talk like that to your father,” William John re- 
torted indignantly, “you'll get your ears boxed, my son.” 

Donald bit his nails and frowned more deeply than ever. 

“There’s no need for anybody who doesn’t want to do so 
to walk in this procession,” Mark said. 

“Well, perhaps you'll tell my missus that?” said William 
John. “She’ve been on at me like a pickpocket, because I 
said I weren’t a-going to, not if King and Parliament said 
I was.” 

“That’s all right, William John,” Mark reassured him. 
“Tl explain to Mrs. Evans. But you really must take 
some steps about Tom Pascoe. He can’t be allowed to dis- 
turb the service like this. It’s entirely his own fault, owing 
to his behaviour last Sunday, that he has lost his job as 
organist. I count on your loyalty. You’d better make it 
perfectly clear that he won’t receive any support from you.” 

In the end Mark had to divest himself of his cope and 
embark on a long argument with Tom Pascoe before Mass 
could begin. He had the vocal assistance of Mrs. Evans, 
Mrs. Pellow and Miss Lambourne, whom a common hatred 
of Tom Pascoe united in a temporary alliance. William 
John Evans tried his best to keep the dispute amicable, even 
when Mrs. Evans declared passionately : 

“Tf I was you, William John, I’d take him by the scruff 
of his neck and drag him down from that stool and heave 
him into the sea.” 

Ultimately Tom Pascoe, perceiving that the feeling of the 
congregation was against him, retired sullenly from his seat 
at the harmonium, and, muttering threats of how he would 
make them all pay for this morning’s work, slouched out of 
the church. 


130 The Heavenly Ladder 


It was not the way Mark had intended to celebrate the 
feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and 
when he was in the pulpit he was at a loss fora sermon. He 
did not know how to recall to his listeners that scene in the 
Temple at Jerusalem when the just and devout Simeon, 
waiting for the consolation of Israel, took the Holy Child 
in his arms and proclaimed Him to be the Light to lighten 
the Gentiles. It seemed to him that the Gentiles of Nance- 
pean still abode in darkness and that he who should have 
known how to bring them the Light was like one of the 
foolish virgins who had forgotten her oil. 

At Sunday school Arthur Tangye was still missing, and 
Mark, who knew how anxious he had been to secure that 
beautiful pale blue stamp, not to mention the blessed candle 
of which he had been talking all the week, could not make 
it out. He did not comment on Arthur’s absence this time, 
because, supposing that he had committed some domestic 
crime, he did not want any of the other children to earn a 
purple counter of self-righteousness by revealing what it 
was. He rejoiced to see that the absence of Arthur had a 
noticeable effect on the spirits of the class, and he rejoiced 
still more when at the end, instead of rushing out into the 
road to triumph once again over the chapel Sunday school, 
Donald came up to him and whispered that Arthur wanted 
to see him. 

“He’s been crying all day,” Donald said. “And he wanted 
for ’ee to go and see him, because his mother won’t leave 
him go out of the house.” 

“But what’s the matter?” Mark asked. 

“Why, nothing much,” said Donald. “Only he tore the 
seat of his breecheses yesterday sliding on a plank, and she 
said she’d be ashamed for any of her children to be seen on 
a Sunday with torn breecheses. It wouldn’t have mattered 
so much, she said, on a week-day, but on a Sunday it was 
making a sight of his mother. Maid Sophie tried to mend 
"em for him this morning and again this afternoon, but she 
couldn’t make ’em meet noways.” 

“That was kind of Sophie,” said Mark, thinking of the 
white counter that should shine like a star from Sophie’s 


Candlemas 131 


money-box. “But why didn’t you tell me what was wrong 
this morning? I would have gone and talked to Mrs. 
Tangye.” 

“It wouldn’t have done no good,” Donald declared. “Mrs. 
Tangye said she’d sooner die than leave one of her children 
go out like that on a Sunday.” 

While the rest of the class promenaded in the fading 
afternoon of the wintry day, Mark hurried across to the 
tumble-down cottage of the Tangyes, the inside of which 
was already dim and shadowy from the small amount of 
light that came through the dusty lattices. There was no- 
body in the living-room, and the remains of the Sunday 
dinner not yet cleared away added to the desolation. Mark 
could not help thinking that Mrs. Tangye might have stayed 
at home and either mended her son’s breeches or made some 
preparation for the children’s tea. As with many people 
who dreamed of luxury and grandeur and whose chief am- 
bition, to hear them talk, was beauty, Mrs. Tangye’s in- 
ability to acquire and achieve all she wanted led her to 
collapse under the disappointment and in despair of the best 
to suppose that she must be content with the worst. A pig 
would have been restless and uncomfortable in her cottage, 
and Mark made up his mind to lecture her severely on the 
vanity and hypocrisy of not allowing Arthur to be seen in a 
pair of torn breeches when on that same Sunday her own 
cottage was fifty times as disgraceful an exhibition of true 
indecency. On Mark’s calling out to Arthur, a small and 
miserable voice responded from one of the rooms upstairs. 
He went up and found him lying face downwards on the 
frowsy bed that he shared with his two elder brothers. 

“Why, what’s the matter, Arthur? We've all missed you 
to-day, and I missed you most of all,’’ Mark said, bending 
down and patting a tangled head of hair that was all damp 
from the tear-soaked pillow. 

“Mother wouldn’t leave me come,” Arthur sobbed, “be- 
cause I scat the seat of my breecheses all abroad.” 

“By Jove, you have, haven’t you?” Mark exclaimed, look- 
ing down at the rent from which the tail of poor Arthur’s 
shirt glimmered in the deepening gloom of the attic. 


132 The Heavenly Ladder 


“And now,” Arthur moaned, turning on his back to hide 
the cause of his misery, “and now I won’t have that blue 
stamp for my album. All the other boys and maids will 
have it, and I won’t. Oh dear, ’tis too bad.” 

“Never mind. You'll be able to get a blue stamp next 
month by coming to Mass on Lady Day.” 

“Perhaps I shall be dead before then,” Arthur sighed. 

“Don’t talk such nonsense. You won’t be anything of 
the kind.” 

“Well, I might so well be dead,” the boy persisted. “It 
don’t seem much good in being alive if I can’t never do 
nothing. If I’d had the best breecheses mother promised 
me, it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d have scat these abroad. 
I wouldn’t have had to keep home all day, and [ wouldn’t 
have missed the candles.” 

“Listen, Arthur,” Mark said. ‘To-morrow is St. Blaise’s 
Day. St. Blaise was a holy bishop and a martyr, and if you 
come to Mass at eight o’clock you will get his stamp. It is 
not a blue one, but a red one, because he was a martyr. It 
used to be called Little Candlemas Day, because people 
lighted bonfires on the hills that night. Here is a blessed 
candle which I have brought for you. Bring it with you 
to-morrow morning and you can light it at Mass, and we 
will offer it to God. But you must not talk any more about 
wanting to die, because that is not only silly, but wicked.” 

“Well, I don’t want to die now I’ve got a candle,” Arthur 
said. “I only belonged wanting to die when I hadn’t got 
no candle. I can’t have the blue stamp, can I, Mr. 
Lidderdale ?” 

“No, I’m afraid you can’t have that,” Mark replied. 
“After all, you must remember that it was through your own 
carelessness that you tore your breeches, and I don’t think 
it would be fair to the others to let you have a stamp for a 
Mass they attended and you didn’t, and to have it post- 
marked for a class they came to and you missed. Besides, 
you have an opportunity of gaining that red stamp of St. 
Blaise to-morrow morning, and perhaps all the children 
won't be able to come like you.” 

“Well, I hope they won’t,’ Arthur declared frankly. 


Candlemas 133 


“Now, I don’t think you ought to hope that,” said Mark, 
who was wondering with what counter to penalize such a 
wish and supposed that a yellow one of jealousy would meet 
the case best. 

“Well, I do hope it,” Arthur insisted, “because if I belong 
to be the only one as goes I shall be the only one with the 
red stamp of St. Blazes.” 

“No, old chap, that’s the wrong way to look at it. You 
can be sorry when you haven’t earned a stamp which the 
others have earned, but you mustn’t be glad when you’ve got 
one that they haven’t. If you are all going to start wishing 
that you could be the only ones at Mass, I shall have to give 
up the stamp-albums, because you won’t be collecting the 
stamps in the right spirit, and I shall feel that what Mr. 
Cass Dale says is true.” 

“What did he say?” 

“Why, he told me yesterday that I was only getting you 
all to come to church and to Sunday school because I offered 
you something for it. He told me that without these stamps 
and other things you wouldn’t come. Is that true?” 

“I should belong to come whatever there was,” Arthur 
affirmed, gazing at Mark with an expression of the utmost 
affection. “I told boy Donald long ago that I wanted to, 
come even if my mother beat me for it, and when she left 
us come I was so happy as a piece of gold.” 

“Well, that’s the right way to talk,’ Mark said. “But 
don’t talk any more about not wanting the others to come. 
That’s the way to earn one of the horrid yellow counters. 
Now, what’s to be done about these breeches of yours? I 
hear Sophie kindly tried to sew them together.” 

“So she did. Only they was too much scat abroad. And 
once she sewed a bit of me to my shirt, and I hollered out.” 

“Very well, Pll speak to your mother about them. And 
now don’t lie there moping any longer, but get up and show 
that you’re able to take a disappointment like a man. Get 
up, and try to clear away the table in the sitting-room 
downstairs, so that when your mother comes back she’ll 
have a pleasant surprise.” 

Arthur got off the tumbled bed and came stumping down- 


134 The Heavenly Ladder 


stairs behind Mark, who left him solemnly dealing with the 
disorder in the twilit room. 

The next morning Donald and Arthur arrived beaming 
at the Vicarage to escort Mark to Mass, at which they were 
the only ones present. Donald volunteered to help Arthur 
with the serving, as it seemed a good opportunity for him 
to try his hand at it when there was nobody else present to 
be scandalized by any mistakes he made. 

Mark began to think that after all the light was burning 
in Nancepean, when he watched the two boys walking slowly 
back up Pendhu hill to breakfast and school and pausing 
from time to time to gloat on the bright red stamps whereon 
was printed the picture of St. Blaise holding in one hand 
the woolcomber with which the flesh was torn from his 
bones because he would not deny his Saviour, and in the 
other a curly taper to symbolize the burning and shining 
light he was when Diocletian persecuted the Christians of 
Cappadocia. 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE TANGYE BAPTISM 


RS. TANGYE herself celebrated the feast of St. 

Blaise by producing a pair of female twins with the 
reddest hair yet seen in the family. If Mrs. Tangye felt 
important when the time was drawing near to receive her 
weekly wage for cleaning the chapel, she felt a good deal 
snore important when she produced a baby, but when, as on 
the present occasion, she achieved twins, an event of which 
the oldest inhabitant could recall no tradition of ever having 
happened in Nancepean, she touched a pinnacle of impor- 
tance that she was unlikely to reach again until she mounted 
to the cynosure of widowhood. Even her husband shared 
in a minor degree her glory and was made extremely drunk 
by the number of rums that to mark the occasion Joe Dun- 
stan insisted on standing him at the Hanover Inn. Fertility 
in man or beast was esteemed by Joe Dunstan above every- 
thing. Bill Tangye’s lapse was made the subject of a 
powerful address by old Sam Dale the following Sunday 
evening in chapel, the news of which did not abash Mrs. 
Tangye in the least. Indeed, if anything, it added one more 
proof of how very much she was the temporary pivot on 
which the wheel of village life revolved. 

Mark went to see her about a week later, by which time 
Bill Tangye had fallen back into his wambling insignificance, 
from which the birth of the twins had temporarily raised 
him. Mrs. Tangye was still in bed, but she was unusually 
bright and conversational even for her, and the two little 
baby girls on either side of her looked as round and small 
and wrinkled and vividly coloured as a couple of tangerines. 
Mark did not notice the pun when he first discovered this 
resemblance, and he wondered afterwards how much the 


135 


136 The Heavenly Ladder 


subconscious play of words had been responsible for per- 
ceiving it. 

“Well, Mrs. Tangye, I’m glad to see you looking so well 
already.” 

“Yes, Mr. Lidderdale, Dr. Bancroft was quite surprised 
when he saw the progress I was making. Did you know 
that I’d had the doctor come out from Rosemarket ?”’ 

The decision of the village wise women to summon the 
doctor and not depend on the services of the district nurse 
had been a conspicuous item in Mrs. Tangye’s triumph. 

Mark was able to gratify her by saying he had heard of 
the doctor’s arrival. 

“Well, I believe it was talked of quite a lot,’ Mrs. Tangye 
said complacently. “He’s a very nice man, Dr. Bancroft. 
But there, I expect you do know him well.” 

Mark shook his head. 

“Don’t you, indeed? Well, that is funny. He drove up 
in his motor-car, and I felt a bit uncomfortable when he 
was examining me, because the children kept on blowing 
his horn all the time. I think it upset him a bit, because 
he turned round quite sharp once and tried to look out of 
the window to see who it was. Only, ever since Walter and 
Jimmie nailed it up after the frame fell out, anyone can’t 
really see properly out of it. But certainly I found Dr. 
Bancroft very civil and obliging, and when he took off his 
fur coat he asked me so polite if I’d mind him hanging it 
over the foot of the bed. ‘Well,’ as I said to Mrs. Wilton 
when she popped round to see me, ‘there’s one thing about 
Dr. Bancroft, he don’t speak to anybody as if they was a 
log of wood.’ ” 

“Can’t anything be done about your window?” Mark in- 
quired. He was beginning to find the air of this attic under 
the mouldering thatch rather too heavy. 

“No, I spoke to Mr. Jago about it more than once, and 
he promised he’d get old Mr. Pascoe to come and look at it, 
but old Mr. Pascoe belongs to be so busy always. He’s been 
nine years going to mend Mrs. Woodses’ gate, and never 
found the time yet. Still, if the cottage is a bit tumbledown, 
‘tis very central. I believe Mr. Lidderdale would open his 


The Tangye Baptism EA 


eyes if I told him how many people have found time to run 
in and have a look at my two babies.” 

Mark was not so much astonished as Mrs. Tangye hoped. 

“What are you going to call them?” he asked. 

“Ah, there! Now you really have asked me something. 
I’d been intending for some time past to call it Lydia if it 
was a girl after a great-aunt of mine who lived over to 
Penzance. But I never reckoned on two girls, and I’ve 
been worrying to think of a name to go with Lydia. It 
wouldn’t hardly do to call one of them Lydia and give the 
other some such name as Jane or Mary. I had another little 
girl who died and which was called Rhoda, but anybody 
don’t like to call one sister after another. But in a way I’m 
sorry now I did call her Rhoda, because she only lived six 
weeks, poor little thing, and you may say it was a nice name 
gone to waste.” 

“Well, there are plenty of other names to match Lydia,” 
Mark said. “How about Delia or Celia or Julia or Cynthia 
or Flavia?’ 

“Flavia,” Mrs. Tangye echoed. “I never call to mind 
that name. I’ve heard of ‘flavour,’ of course, but not for a 
name. What was the first one Mr. Lidderdale said ?”’ 

“Delia or Celia, I think.” 

“Tis a pity now I fixed on Lydia, because I might 
have called the one Delia and t’other Celia. Only perhaps 
that would make a bit of confusion between them, especially 
them being twins. Perhaps I’d better stick to Lydia, espe- 
cially as it was my great-aunt’s name.” 

“T should call the other Celia,’ Mark advised. 

“Well, ’tis certainly out of the common,” Mrs. Tangye 
agreed. “And if she ever come to be a great-aunt herself, 
it ‘ud make a nice uncommon name for her niece to give 
one of her babies.” 

Mrs. Tangye’s imagination had leaped forward, and her 
glasses glittered at the prospect of a long line of nieces trail- 
ing down through the distant future, all of them as fertile 
as herself. 

“T’ve brought you a small present, Mrs. Tangye,” said 
Mark, offering her a parcel. “I didn’t think that with your 


138 The Heavenly Ladder 


new responsibilities you’d have much time to mend Arthur’s 
knickerbockers well enough for Sundays, and so I managed 
to find a pair of blue serge ones that I think will fit him.” 

It struck Mark that there was just the faintest shadow of 
disappointment over Mrs. Tangye’s thanks, as if when he 
first produced the small parcel she had anticipated some 
more personal tribute to celebrate her achievement. How- 
ever, it was not long before she managed to regard the gift 
as an attention to herself and to acquire from the presenta- 
tion of it an even richer pompousness of demeanour and 
outlook. 

“Of course, I should like to have the both of them 
christened to church,” she said importantly. 

“Please don’t think it necessary to do that because I’ve 
bought you a pair of knickerbockers for Arthur. And don’t 
think that your two little girls will add anything wonderful 
to the Church. I shall be happy to baptize them, but you 
must clearly understand that, if I do baptize them, they and 
you and their godfathers and godmothers will have a great 
responsibility.” 

Mark was rather vexed with himself for having taken 
this opportunity to present Mrs. Tangye with the knicker- 
bockers for Arthur. The last thing in the world he wanted 
was to give her the slightest impression that he was trying 
to bribe her to bring her infants to the font. Yet, after all, 
was he not wrong himself in considering anything except 
his duty toward those two little tangerine-headed babies 
lying there? 

So it fell out that about three weeks later on a Lenten 
grey Sunday morning Lydia and Celia Tangye were made 
lively members of Christ’s holy Church. Mark decided to 
let attendance at the Baptism count as an attendance at 
Sunday school, because he thought that an object-lesson in 
the administration of a sacrament would impress itself a 
good deal more than an hour’s theoretical talking. Major 
Drumgold had been stirring up opposition to Mark’s way 
of conducting the services, and had already written two or 
three times to the Bishop about the lack of respect he ac- 
corded to Morning Prayer; and, having found out that it 


The Tangye Baptism 139 


annoyed his Vicar, he had taken to attending Morning 
Prayer in order to stalk out of church in the middle of 
Mass. Mark was glad of an opportunity to obey one of 
the rubrics implicitly, and he rather fancied that the Major 
might protest against his interrupting Morning Prayer to 
administer Baptism after the Second Lesson. 

It is scarcely necessary to say that Miss Horton was one 
of the godmothers. The other three were Mrs. Wilton, 
Miss Lambourne, and an extraordinary woman imported 
one would fancy with a considerable amount of difficulty 
from Rosemarket. This woman, a Mrs. Trebilcock, had a 
very loud sniff, which sent Susie Tangye into such an 
ecstasy of merriment that she had to retire from the bap- 
tismal procession and recover herself in the sacristy. But 
she had no sooner recovered from the effect of Mrs. Trebil- 
cock’s sniff than she was thrown into fresh fits of irrepres- 
sible laughter first by the yells of Celia and Lydia and then 
by Miss Horton’s handling of her particular goddaughter. 

Mrs. Tangye probably never enjoyed herself so much in 
her life. To have the whole service in church held up while 
public attention was concentrated upon herself and her off- 
spring was really wonderful, and she could not sufficiently 
congratulate herself upon her foresight in securing Mrs. 
Trebilcock as a godmother, because Mrs. Trebilcock would 
undoubtedly spread the news of such an impressive baptism 
all over Rosemarket. She had already been looking forward 
to the delight of relating to various friends she should meet 
on the first day she went marketing the various details of 
the birth of her twins, and now to this would be added an 
account of the Baptism, while as a guarantee that she was 
not exaggerating she should be able to refer her listeners 
to Mrs. Trebilcock’s testimony. 

“Let me see,” she said to Mark, when Mass was over and 
she was receiving the congratulations of everybody upon the 
quietness of her daughters for the last hour. “Let me see, 
‘tis quite right what the children said about there not being 
any Sunday school this afternoon?” 

“Yes, I understood from Sophie and Susie that you were 
having a large tea-party, Mrs. Tangye, and would require 


_ 


140 The Heavenly Ladder 


their help in the preparations. So I said that attendance at 
the Baptism could count instead.” 

“Thank you very much, Mr. Lidderdale. Yes, I shall be 
glad of their help. I’ve got a parcel of folks coming in, and 
I wanted my friend Mrs. Trebilcock to see a bit of Nance- 
pean. It’s seldom she gets the chance to leave Rosemarket 
for the whole day.” 

“T hope you haven’t spent too much money on this tea,” 
Mark said a little severely. ‘With all these children you 
can’t afford such extravagances.” 

“Just a few cakes and things,” said Mrs. Tangye vaguely. 
“Well, I shall be getting my chapel money next week. Now, 
Susie, leave the babies alone, you naughty girl. You'll get 
me so hurried in a moment, I won’t know which is which.” 

“Don’t you love babies, Vicar?” Miss Horton exclaimed 
over Mrs. Tangye’s shoulder at this moment. 

Mark pretended that he supposed her to be asking some- 
body else this question. 

“Come now, Mrs. Tangye, if you’re going to drive back 
with the missus,” William John shouted from the church- 
yard gate. 

“Mr. Evans kindly said he’d drive me back,” Mrs. Tangye 
proclaimed in a voice dazed by the attention she was 
receiving. 

That evening Toby Prawle, who had gone to Chypie to 
interview a farmer about a fox that was reported to be 
commiting havoc among his poultry, brought Mark a note 
from Major Drumgold. 


Angarrack, 
Chypie R.S.O., 
Cornwall. 
March 2, 1913. 
Dear Lidderdale, 

I have already spoken to you on several occasions and 
written to you more than once to remonstrate with you on 
the way you conduct Mattins. I have also very reluctantly 
written to the Bishop and protested against your methods 
of taking the services. This morning you exceeded the 


The Tangye Baptism I4I 


bounds by introducing an immensely long Baptism into the 
middle of Mattins, so that even though, as you know, I 
never stay for the second service, I did not get back to 
Angarrack until nearly one o’clock. Considering that in 
spite of my protests you persist in holding Mattins at half- 
past ten instead of eleven o’clock, the hour to which most 
of us are accustomed, I consider that one o’clock is a mon- 
strous hour to reach home. It was particularly annoying 
this morning as my wife was anxious to take the opportunity 
of our having a cook to go for a walk with me. Moreover, 
I must remark that there is something particularly objec- 
tionable and almost irreverent in having a baptism in the 
middle of a public service. I noticed that several of the 
children were giggling in a very unseemly way, and I am 
sorry that attendance at the Church Sunday school has not 
yet succeeded in making them behave any better in church. 
Mrs. Tangye is as much entitled as any of us to have her 
children christened. Poor woman, I know she has a very 
hard struggle to make both ends meet, and on several occa- 
sions I have been able and glad to help her with vegetables, 
but I must protest against her christening being made 
almost a parochial matter simply because several of her 
children have been persuaded to attend Church Sunday 
school. I do not wish to impute to you any unworthy mo- 
tives, but do you not realize yourself that you are exposing 
yourself to criticism by spoiling Mrs. Tangye in this way? 

It doesn’t matter so much what you do on week-days. 
For instance, I heard on very good authority that you ac- 
tually covered yourself and young Donald Evans with 
cinders on Ash Wednesday. But I said nothing. In fact, 
when several of the farmers came to me and asked what 
they ought to do, I advised them to keep quiet and as good 
as told them that it was no business of theirs what you did 
on a week-day. But Sunday is another matter. You have 
no business to flout the religious susceptibilities of your 
parishioners on a Sunday. Sunday belongs as much to us 
as to you, and I think you ought to realize that you are 
driving people away from church by your extreme be- 
haviour. Cannot you bring yourself to make a few con- 


142 The Heavenly Ladder 


cessions for the sake of the religion of which you are a 
minister ? 

I am writing to you this afternoon in the friendliest spirit | 
in the hope that you may feel in the mood to listen to what 
I say. I do not intend to write to the Bishop about holding 
this baptism in the middle of Mattins, because though he 
has acknowledged my last three letters he has not answered 
them, and I am hoping that another personal appeal to your 
better feelings may effect more. Easter will soon be upon 
us. On referring to my diary I find that it will fall exactly 
three weeks to-day. At Easter we shall have a lot of visi- 
tors, and I do beg you to behave with a little moderation. 
You cannot expect them: to attend services like the one this 
morning. Moreover, your example has inspired Kennedy 
to imitate you at Chypie, and with the Vicar of Lanyon 
suffering from paralysis, which makes his services unpleas- 
ant to attend for another reason, what is going to happen? 
You must realize that we cannot afford to drive people 
away. Our Gold Club depends for its prosperity on the 
holiday seasons, and Nancepean, not to mention Lanyon and 
Chypie, depend a great deal on the money that the visitors 
bring. I feel sure that when you look at matters from this 
point of view, which may not have struck you, you will do 
something to help us all and thereby make religion mean 
something, for if it does not mean helping one another, what 
does it mean? I am a plain man and cannot remember the 
text I should like to quote, but I know there is a text on this 
subject. Well, I haven’t written such a long letter since I 
got engaged to my wife and was ordered abroad next day. 
I hope that now we have what promises to be an excellent 
cook, you will come up and have supper with us and a little 
bridge. I should not like to feel that our religious differ- 
ences were going to be a barrier to social intercourse, and I 
think you'll agree that I am trying to act fairly by you in 
advising everybody to let you do as you like on week-days 
provided you give us what we want on*Sundays. 


Yours sincerely, 
Henry H. Drumgold. 


The Tangye Baptism 143 
To which Mark replied: 


Dear Drumgold, 

If you will refer to your Prayer Book under “The Minis- 
tration of Publick Baptism of Infants to be used in the 
Church,” you will read in the rubrics at the beginning a 
particular recommendation to administer baptism exactly as 
I administered it this morning. To be sure as an alternative 
the Evening Service is suggested, but you could not expect 
Mrs. Tangye to bring her twins on a blowy March night all 
the way from Nancepean to Church Cove. As you have 
several times implored me to stick to the Prayer Book, you 
ought to give me credit when I do. 

With regard to changing my services to suit the Easter 
visitors, you surely cannot believe that I will do that. I 
am not indulging myself in extravagant behaviour to amuse 
myself, but because I believe that what I am doing is right, 
and I hesitate to say what I think of your suggestion that 
I should turn the worship of Almighty God into an addi- 
tional attraction for holiday-makers. I am sorry to have 
to reply to your letter, the good feeling of which I recog- 
nize, in this intransigent way, but it is fairer to you and to 
myself that I should make my position perfectly clear. 

Yours sincerely, 
Mark Lidderdale. 


CHART HRIX 
THE STONE ALTAR 


ARK had been hoping very much that the stone altar 

presented by Drogo Mortemer would be in place be- 
fore Easter, and when Stephen Crutchley’s men arrived on 
the Friday of Passion week he knew that his hope would 
be fulfilled. They worked hard on the great granite blocks, 
but it was necessary to sing the Mass of Palm Sunday at 
the old wooden altar, which had been removed and set up 
again in the Lady Chapel. 

Mark knew that he was going to have a difficult time this 
Easter, and he was glad that all the fusses in connexion 
with the church were likely to be brought to a head at the 
Easter Vestry. What would be called interfering with the 
fabric by putting in this new altar would be merged with 
such outrages upon the simple piety of the visitors as the 
distribution of blessed palms, the Adoration of the Cross, 
and the Mass of the Presanctified. 

Palm Sunday passed off more or less tranquilly, chiefly 
because it had been assiduously put about that the new Vicar 
was going to ride round the church on a donkey, and when 
this remarkable feat was not attempted the other ceremonies 
seemed a little tame. Moreover, the fact that all the cruci- 
fixes, images, and sacred pictures were veiled made the 
half-erected stone altar under its sackcloth less conspicuous, 
so that nobody realized yet what the new Vicar was going 
to do. Mark had settled first of all that the children should 
go out and cut those branches of willow-buds that are called 
palms instead of sending up to an ecclesiastical furnisher 
for those desiccated crosses woven out of the dried fronds 
of real palms. Then he had an inspiration. Why not cut 
the fronds from one of the many fine old palms planted by 
his grandfather in the Vicarage garden? This was done, 


144 


The Stone Altar 145 


and the procession before Mass, in which each child carried 
an immense frond of Phoenix Canariensis green and fresh 
and glittering, would have been hard to beat in churches 
much wealthier and much better equipped than this little 
church by the sea. 

Major Drumgold was present with a party of visitors, 
and stayed till the end of Mass in order to introduce them 
to Mark, perhaps in the hope that when Mark saw what 
fashion and charm could be produced by the Golf Club at 
holiday-time he would relent from his intention of ramming 
the red-hot poker of Popery down their throats. Mark, 
however, was only aware of a bunch of inquisitive and 
patronizing women whose counterparts might be seen in the 
vicinity of any bandstand on the South Coast. His nerves 
were in no trim to respond to their inane small-talk, to their 
enthusiasm about the position of the church, and to their 
lamentations over the earliness of Easter this year. Major 
Drumgold, seeing that they were not having the success he 
had hoped, suggested that they should walk on and that he 
Should catch them up. 

“Awfully nice woman, Mrs. Gladwyn. Her husband’s 
brother is governor of—oh lord, I’ve forgotten where, but 
you know where I mean, one of our colonies. Her daughter 
writes. Very successfully too, I believe. The tall woman 
is a Mrs. Hart. She has a house in Brook Street. Very 
wealthy, I believe. That’s what I say about the Golf Club. 
We do get such an awfully decent set of people—particu- 
larly at Easter. Deuced pity it’s so early this year. We’re 
apt to have such rotten weather about now. I say, old chap, 
where did you get all those bless¢d palms from?’ 

“You mean bless’d palms,” said Mark, with a smile. 
“Why, the children cut them in the Vicarage garden.” 

“What?” Drumgold shouted. “I say, what awful dese- 
cration! You know what I mean? Why, those palms of 
yours are the finest in Cornwall. I say, it’s absolute 
Vandalism!” 

The Major mopped his forehead. He really was pro- 
foundly moved. 


146 The Heavenly Ladder 


“You give your vegetable marrows, Drumgold. Why 
shouldn’t I give my palms?” 

“But you can’t cut a specimen Whatsitsname—oh, it’s no 
use arguing with you. You're a fanatic. That’s what you 
are. A fanatic. But seriously, old chap, I do beg you to go 
steady during Easter. It’s going to mean the very deuce of 
a row, if you don’t. Look here, I don’t hold with your prac- 
tices, but we keep friendly. You know what I mean? I 
write you a real snorter now and again, but we can be polite 
to one another in public. And I’m advising you for your 
good. The people are getting angry. They are really. You 
can’t drive a Cornishman. You know what I mean? He 
won’t be driven. He’s obstinate. And you’ll be up against 
it in a minute. There’s talk of getting up a petition to the 
Bishop. Go steady for a bit. I was awfully delighted when 
you decided not to ride round the church this morning on 
that donkey. I was really. ‘By Jove, Drumgold,’ I said 
to myself, ‘he’s beginning to see that it won’t do.’ ” 

Mark wondered if it was worth while explaining that 
there had never been any question of his riding on a donkey, 
but he decided that it was not. 

“By the way,” the Major went on, “what on earth induced 
you to have the second service at the side of the church 
like that ?” . 

“The new altar isn’t quite finished yet,” Mark replied. 

“New altar? What new altar?” 

“The new altar that is being put in. It has been presented 
to the church by a generous donor who prefers to remain 
anonymous.” 

“Look here,” said Drumgold earnestly. “Why do a thing 
like that? You know how conservative the Cornishmen 
are. You know what'll happen. As soon as you’ve put it 
up, a couple of fellows will come out from the village one 
night and dig it up and throw it over the cliff.” 

“T don’t think so, Drumgold,” said Mark. 

“Well, you mark my words, old chap, they will. And 
you'll remember that I warned you. However, I might as 
well argue with a gatepost. You’re going to have a very 
troublesome Easter vestry, you know.” 


The Stone Altar 147 


“I’m sure I am,” Mark said. 

“What I don’t understand about you,” Drumgold went 
on, “is that you don’t seem able to grasp that by carrying on 
as you’re doing you’re wounding the religious feelings of 
everybody who doesn’t happen to see eye to eye with your- 
self. You can’t expect these visitors not to feel sore 
about it.” 

“Are you closing the links on Good Friday?” Mark asked. 

“No, we’re not closing. You see, a lot of people only get 
down on Thursday night and have to get back on Easter 
Tuesday, and it’s hardly fair to deprive them of two days’ 
golf. Personally, I shouldn’t mind opening the links on 
Sundays, but the people here would resent it, and so I put 
my own feelings on one side.” 

“Well, Drumgold, if you don’t see the necessity of clos- 
ing the links on Good Friday, I’m afraid you won’t find it 
very easy to convince me that many of your precious visi- 
tors possess these deep religious feelings that can be injured 
by my ecclesiastical behaviour.” 

The new altar was finished on the Wednesday of Holy 
Week, and Mark was half unwilling to hang the dossal of 
austere red damask lest even that should detract a little from 
the stark and massive solemnity of the bare stone. It was 
good to see the way that the great square altar improved 
the appearance of the church, and now if only one could 
abolish those hideous pews of pitch-pine and replace them 
with a few rush-seated praying-chairs—a dozen would be 
ample for present accommodation—what an improvement 
that would be! And what an outcry it would raise! No 
wood had quite the appeal of pitch-pine to simple folk. One 
might almost use pitch-pine as the dividing line between 
two broad categories of taste. Had the old altar, now in 
the Lady Chapel, been made of pitch-pine instead of ordi- 
nary deal, it might have been impossible to placate the parish 
over its removal. What was there in these strata of fossil- 
ized treacle that touched the commonplace imagination so 
profoundly? Perhaps it was that, like an arum or a big 
Japanese chrysanthemum, the wood scarcely seemed real. It 


148 The Heavenly Ladder 


transcended both nature and art. Yes, it was lucky that the 
old altar was only made of deal. 

Mark tried not to be sorry that Miss Horton came to 
Tenebrae that Wednesday night, tried not to read the psalms 
in such a way as to cut her out of her eager responses, tried 
not to wish that Donald could snuff her out as one by one 
he snuffed out the tawny penitential candles of unbleached 
wax. Without Miss Horton and her solitary impenitent 
candle of creamy paraffin the nave of the church would have 
been empty, and the ancient Office, which to Mark more 
than any of the more dramatic ceremonial of Holy Week 
expressed those heavy days and nights before the Cruci- 
fixion, would have given him the full value of solemn fore- 
boding. By an effort he compelled himself not to notice 
Miss Horton’s presence nor, when it forced itself upon him 
in spite of everything, to resent it, but to rejoice that at least 
one woman in Nancepean had taken the trouble to come 
out and worship her Saviour. 

Gradually Mark became oblivious of Miss Horton, as one 
after another the candles were extinguished. Gradually, 
above the muttering of the psalms, the muttering of the 
flowing tide was audible and the antiphons of the waves 
breaking upon the beach. As the illumination grew less and 
the sound of the sea more loud, Mark noticed that Arthur 
Tangye looked nervously at Donald once or twice, as if he 
would be reassured of their safety inside the church. Mark 
beckoned to Donald. 

“Let Arthur put out the last five candles,” he whispered. 
And “a blue counter for Donald,” he thought, when the boy 
made no sign of discontent at being deprived of a duty he 
cherished. 

With the slow invasion of the grey moonlight the great 
stone altar seemed to take on an added bulk as if the ele- 
mental nature of the granite could assert itself in spite of 
the Divine uses to which it had been hewn. Heriot had not 
been successful in obtaining any relics of even one martyr, 
nor had the altar been consecrated. Mark began to regret 
that he had not applied for a faculty and secured the Bishop’s 
good will. There was something strange about that altar. 


The Stone Altar 149 


He had the queer fancy of a great beast saddled, but not yet 
tamed. To-morrow he should say his first Mass on the new 
altar, and he was glad to think that the first Mass offered 
upon it would be on Maundy Thursday, would be that won- 
derful white Mass which breaks like a ray of sunlight 
through the clouds of Passiontide. The elemental hostility 
would surely vanish then. 

Mark had wanted to take advantage of the walk home in 
the moonlight to impress upon Donald and Arthur the mean- 
ing of the great drama of Holy Week in which they were 
playing their parts. Donald did appear to have some inkling 
of the profundities that in her wisdom the Church did not 
attempt to express save by ceremonies that nobody could 
mistake for anything but infinitely attenuated shadows of 
the reality. What Arthur made of it all was difficult to find 
out. Mark, remembering some of his own childish experi- 
ences, wanted to believe that the little boy was being drawn 
nearer to God by one of those revelations of His Love that 
He makes to children. Yet there was nothing in Arthur’s 
replies in class or in his conversation outside to indicate 
that he had the least idea what this strange religion meant. 
He had been drawn into it as a child might be drawn into 
fairyland. The putting on of a surplice, the putting out of 
a candle, best of all the solemn holding of the incense-boat 
were all a projection into real life of a delightful game of 
make-believe. It was like dreaming of being a soldier and 
suddenly finding yourself a drummer boy, the centre of an 
admiring and curious crowd of other little boys. But would 
it take him anywhere, or would he grow out of it as one 
grew out of fairylands however spacious they might once 
have seemed? ‘That was a sad question to be asking one- 
self, Mark thought. “And I who ask it,” he said to himself, 
“am daring to grumble because we shall have Miss Horton’s 
company all the way home.” 

Mark tried to be pleasant with her, and he must have 
been fairly successful, because Miss Horton became more 
and more excited all the way up Pendhu hill, even rising to 
the height of telling him about a picture she felt inspired to 
paint as soon as the weather was settled. Up the hill they 


150 The Heavenly Ladder 


went, Mark listening sympathetically, Miss Horton elo- 
quently pictorial and falling now over her bicycle, now over 
her dog, the two boys murmuring to each other those boyish 
secrets which have a mystery that the secrets of little girls 
achieve never. 


CEA Pie Res 
GOOD FRIDAY 


N the morning of Good Friday, one of those rather blue 

days of Spring that Good Friday so often gives, even 
when Faster is grey and stormy, there were a good many 
visitors in church, including the bunch of four schoolmasters 
that spent all their vacations playing golf and lodging with 
the Martins at Nankervis farm. One of them, a burly man, 
with a large black beard, was wearing a conspicuously, an 
almost blatantly comfortable Norfolk suit that gave him the 
appearance of an unbraced and unbuttoned ogre. This must 
be the redoubtable Mr. Ringer, whose advent had been 
sighed for at the Golf Club as being the one man who really 
would be able to put this ass of a new Vicar in his place. 
In order not to miss even the least obvious of Mark’s “‘go- 
ings on,’ Mr. Ringer had donned a pair of gold-rimmed 
glasses, over which he glared in turn at every member of 
the congregation as if he or she was one of his scholars, 
until at last he concentrated his appalling gaze on the bad 
boy of the school, waggling his arms behind his back as if 
he were reaching somewhere in the folds of an imaginary 
gown for an imaginary cane. From time to time he made 
half-audible comments on the proceedings to his companions, 
who sniffed and sneered and smiled to themselves with the 
conscious superiority of pedagogues. While Mark was read- 
ing the prayers, Mr. Ringer assumed the kind of expression 
he would have assumed if the culprit were in his class and 
construing a piece of Livy he had not prepared. 

Mark was worn out by relentless fasting and the strain 
of trying to carry through single-handed the elaborate serv- 
ices of the season, not to mention the anxiety of getting the 
new altar into its place and the effort he had made to be 
charitable both in thought and speech to a number of people 

151 


152 The Heavenly Ladder 


toward whom he felt precious little charity. Suddenly in 
the presence of that big black-bearded man in a Norfolk 
suit with his three sniggering companions he felt that he 
could not go through with the ceremony of creeping to the 
Cross; and that if he tried he should be tempted to snatch 
the Crucifix up and use it as a weapon to drive them and all 
that staring crowd of holiday-makers out of the church. 

“Gadarene swine!” he murmured to himself, and in that 
moment he felt a hatred of human nature that was as fierce 
as the love that flames in the heart of a converted soul. 

After the Mass of the Presanctified, Mark waited in the 
sacristy until the congregation had dispersed and then 
climbed up the Castle Cliff and sat on a tussock of thrift, 
overlooking Dollar Cove and the outspread sea of hyaline. 

“It was like Peter, but twenty thousand times as base a 
cowardice,” he thought. Turning from the serenity of the 
sky and the wide stretches of golden sand growing wider as 
the sea retreated from them as quietly as a withdrawn veil, 
he buried his face in the grass. How should he after such 
a betrayal of his Saviour dare to go back into the church 
presently and preach the Devotion of the Three Hours? 
Now that he looked back on his sudden abandonment of 
creeping to the Cross he found his conduct inexplicable. In 
all his life he could remember no action of his which ap- 
peared so contemptible, so humiliating. To have been 
frightened by the attitude of four pedagogues! To have 
collapsed under the strain of a self-consciousness provoked 
by the pince-nez of a burly man with a black beard and an 
ill-fitting Norfolk suit! 

After a while the infinitely various earthy odours and the 
cool grassiness of the place allayed his feverish regrets. He 
began to exist in the miniature world six inches from his 
face, and in a sudden amazement at the wealth of various 
colours in a vernal squill when regarded so intently he lost 
himself. When he emerged again from this microcosm, 
summoned back by the shouts of the people gathering lim- 
pets on the beach according to an ancient custom of cele- 
brating the low spring tide of Good Friday, Mark felt that 


Good Friday 153 


the stain of his cowardice had been obliterated by the Eternal 
Love of God. 

The congregation was much smaller for the Three Hours, 
and the two or three female visitors who were present had 
obviously come neither out of inquisitiveness nor conven- 
tionality, but because they genuinely desired to stand for a 
little while on Calvary and look up where the Saviour of the 
world hung upon the Cross, 

Soon after Mark had reached the sixth word at about a 
quarter-past two, his preaching was interrupted by talk and 
laughter that came floating into the church through the 
sunny windows from the direction of the thirteenth hole 
on the low cliffs, just beyond the northerly wall of the 
churchyard. 

“Tt is finshed. The agony was accomplished. God’s will 
to save the world was fulfilled. Surely the least imaginative 
of His creatures must be awed by the simplicity of that 
final statement when he remembers... .” 

Another burst of laughter invaded the church. Mark 
broke off abruptly, and, descending from the pulpit, hurried 
outside and across the churchyard. He had not stopped to 
consider who it might be on the thirteenth green, but when 
he saw that it was Mr. Ringer with his three companions, 
he felt like Samson reckless unto death if only he might slay 
these Philistines. While he was drawing nearer to the four- 
some, he was dimly conscious above the beating of his heart 
that the two caddies were the eldest Tangye boys, so that 
whatever he should say and whatever he should do would 
be reported with suitable exaggeration in the village. Mr. 
Ringer and his companions watched Mark’s approach in 
cassock and cotta and black stole with the kind of puzzled 
contempt with which four small boys watch another small 
boy’s kite flopping along the ground instead of soaring as it 
should. 

“Do you mind clearing away from here?’ Mark said, 
pale as his cotta. ‘You may not realize it, but you are dis- 
turbing the service with your chattering and laughter.” 

“Oh, this is very rich. This is very rich indeed,” Mr. 
Ringer proclaimed to his companions. “I was not aware 


154 The Heavenly Ladder 


that the—er—Lanyon golf-links came within the—er—local 
ecclesiastical jurisdiction—um—aw—um. Have we made a 
mistake, caddie? Have we made a mistake, Matthieson? 
Is this by any chance not the thirteenth hole, Scrymgeour ? 
I think it is your stroke, Brownlow—um—aw—um. You 
had better hurry up. You are annoying the Vicar.” 

“T haven’t the time to spare for argument now,’ Mark 
went on in cold wrath. “Your objectionable behaviour out 
here fetched me down from the pulpit. You, sir! It’s you, 
sir, I’m talking to,” he added sharply to Mr. Ringer, who 
was staring at him over his putter as in the picture-book 
Blunderbore stares at Jack the Giant Killer over his club. 
“T believe you’re a schoolmaster. You should have learned 
by now to set a better example both inside a church and 
outside a church. This is Good Friday, and not the time 
for middle-aged schoolmasters to be playing about like 
urchins in the gutter. Please take yourselves off from this 
green. 

Mr. Ringer was drawing in his breath to deliver a pon- 
derous sarcasm; but Mark quickly picked up the two balls 
and flung them as far as he could in the direction of the 
towans. 

“I’m not quite sure where the fourteenth hole is,” he 
said. “But it’s somewhere in that direction, and you may be 
able to walk as far without laughing, especially as you, sir,” 
he turned on Mr. Ringer, “whom I take to be the humorist 
of the party, do not look now as if you were particularly 
amused.” 

Mark turned on his heels and went back into the church. 

In the afternoon about tea-time Drumgold called at the 
Vicarage dressed, much to Mark’s amusement, in a black 
suit, for it struck him that this was put on rather to sym- 
bolize the enormity of his behaviour toward Mr. Ringer 
than to commemorate the solemnity of the day. 

“T say, Lidderdale,” he began at once, “I’ve come over to 
see what can be done about the dreadful affair this after- 
noon. The first account I heard said that you’d knocked 
Ringer over the cliffs, and I was most awfully relieved to 


Good Friday 155 


hear from his own lips that you had not gone quite as far 
as that.” 

“T probably should have had a good try to knock him 
Over on any other day,” Mark said. 

“Oh, come now, Lidderdale, you ought not to talk like 
that even in jest. It’s really a very serious matter. I fear 
that nothing can stop Ringer from writing to the Bishop 
about it, though I’ll do my best if you’ll let me have a note 
of apology. You could say that you didn’t realize who he 
was.” 

“But I did. I told him so. The only thing I didn’t realize 
was that he was quite such a cad.” 

“My dear fellow, the whole Club is up in arms against 
you,’ Drumgold said. curling his little red moustache in 
extreme agitation. 

“T’m not a member of it.” 

“No, I know, it is such a pity you don’t join us. We're 
such an awfully jolly crowd. You know what I mean? 
And you can always get tea there.” 

Upset though he was by the terrible occurrence, the 
Major’s pride in the amenities of the Golf Club was un- 
daunted. 

“That reminds me,’ Mark said. ‘“Wouldn’t you like some 
tea now?” 

“My dear fellow, I couldn’t touch it. I’m too upset. If 
it had been anybody but Ringer! He’s such a capital chap. 
So’s Scrymgeour. So’s Brownlow. So’s Matthieson. 
They’re all masters at Upton. Jolly good school! If I had 
a youngster, I’d send him to Upton like a shot. Very healthy 
tone, Ringer tells me. Of course, you started off by aggra- 
vating him at the service this morning.” 

“Well, if you won’t have any tea and if I’m not going to 
pay the slightest attention to our friend Mr. Ringer, there 
doesn’t seem much point in prolonging this conversation, 
Drumgold. I’ve got a service in the Parish Hall at six 
o’clock, and I want to rest for an hour. We can argue it 
out at the Easter vestry next week. I shan’t be so tired, 
and you'll have plenty of parishioners to support you.” 

Mark had felt that he ought to hold a mission service in 


156 The Heavenly Ladder 


the Parish Hall, so that nobody could complain that on Good 
Friday he had been kept from worship by the eccentricities 
of his Vicar. 

But there were no new faces, and he found it very diffi- 
cult to repeat with any emotion what he had already said 
to everybody present. And after the service he had a 
disappointment, because Mrs. Evans declared that Donald 
had been using his bad leg too much to-day and must not go 
all the way down to church again for Tenebrae. Mrs. 
Tangye, on hearing this, had to assert her importance by 
forbidding Arthur to go either, and Mark was faced with 
the prospect of saying Tenebrae with only Miss Horton 
beside himself in the church, and, worse than that, of hav- 
ing her company on the road there and back. He nearly 
told her that he should not say Tenebrae to-night; but he 
could not quite bring himself to do this, although he did 
insist that he should be allowed to walk down alone and 
that Miss Horton should ride her bicycle. 

An immense fatigue came over Mark while he was saying 
the long psalms, and each time he rose to extinguish one of 
the candles he felt that he could scarcely drag himself back 
to his stall. 

At last the moment came to remove the fifteenth candle, 
and just as Mark did so Miss Horton managed to knock 
her own solitary candle off the ledge of the pew in which 
she was, thereby plunging the church into darkness at the 
very moment when a wave leapt forward from the flowing 
tide and crashed in thunder against the wall of the church- 
yard. The darkness was not so absolute as it had seemed 
when it first came. Although the moon was scarcely up and 
already heavily obscured by clouds, a mist of grey stole 
through the windows; and the fifteenth candle, hidden be- 
hind the dossal but still alight, shone dimly through the red 
damask and cast upon the altar a shadowy stain of blood. 
But Mark could not rise from his stall to bring it into the 
chancel according to the ritual of Tenebrae. He sat para- 
lyzed, while the wind rose moaning and crept through the 
church so that the hidden candle flickered in the draught 
and gave to the shadowy stain an illusory semblance of blood 


Good Friday 157 


flowing down over the altar. Again Mark tried to rise, but 
without success; and he began to ask himself if he really 
was paralyzed. He wondered if he was even any longer 
capable of speech; but he feared to make trial of his voice 
lest Miss Horton should come to see what was the matter 
with him. And again with a tremendous effort he strove 
in a nightmare sweat to rise from his stall. It was useless. 
He was as immovable as the new altar. This was the result 
of fasting too severely and of overtaxing his strength with 
long services that nobody wanted. For an instant he was 
the prey of self-pity; but he fought off that particular 
demon, that clammy-fingered demon with a body spongy as 
a bat’s. 

“But I have overtired myself,” he thought with such con- 
viction that he fancied he had uttered his thought aloud and 
dreaded to see Miss Horton emerging from the shimmering 
gloom beyond the chancel to give him her help. 

“Why can’t that damned woman leave me alone? Why 
must she be the only person in Nancepean who enjoys her- 
self in church? Am I thinking hard or talking aloud?” he 
asked himself. 

The waves were thundering against the churchyard wall. 

“That’s a heavy swell coming in before a gale,’ he 
thought. “An equinoctial gale.” 

The phrase gave him pleasure to repeat to himself over 
and over again. It seemed a proof that he was still capable 
of reason. It even struck him as a very profound piece of 
natural observation. An equinoctial gale. He must not for- 
get it later on, but for the moment he must concentrate upon 
rising from his stall and bringing in the last candle and 
making that noise at the end of Tenebrae which signifies the 
convulsion of nature after the death of Jesus Christ. He 
must beat upon the choir-stalls and stamp his foot. Per- 
haps that was why the waves were crashing so loudly against 
the churchyard wall. They were taking his place. And the 
obscured moon was the hidden Light of the world. Or was 
that the pathetic fallacy? It was. Of course, it was. It 
was a weakness of his own imagination to excuse himself 
for not rising from this stall and bringing out the lighted 


158 The Heavenly Ladder 


-candle from behind the altar as he should. And what was 
going to happen if he did not get up soon? That woman 
would not go on sitting quietly down there for ever, though 
no doubt she was ashamed of herself for clumsily knocking 
over her candle like that and would stay quiet for a while. 
Or had it really been an accident? Had it not perhaps been 
a plot to give her an excuse to come stealing up out of the 
darkness on the plea that he was ill and required help? He 
must not faint. He must not on any account lose conscious- 
ness absolutely. Miss Horton would go out to fetch as- 
sistance, and the nearest house was Nankervis, where those 
infernal schoolmasters were staying. 

“T will not faint.” 

But everything round him was losing substantial form. 
The whole church was tremulous as the shadow of a tree ina 
windy moonlight. Even the new altar set up to endure for 
ever was turning to blood and water. Out of His side came 
blood and water. 

“TI have pierced His side with a spear, for this morning 
I have denied Him. I feared that black-bearded servant of 
the high priest and denied Him. I feared to take off my 
shoes and kiss the feet of my crucified Saviour lest that 
burly pedagogue should laugh.” 

It was not a feverish delusion. The altar really was 
melting. ... 

“The sea must not sweep us into oblivion. The sea must 
be kept out of the church. I can feel the spray—the spray 
—the—what is the matter, Miss Horton? Go away! Why 
on earth are you bending over me like that?” 

“You fainted, Vicar. You fainted completely away, and 
I was sprinkling you with the only water I could find, which 
happened to be holy water.” 

Mark tried to pretend that it was quite an ordinary oc- 
currence for a priest to faint in church like this, because he 
knew that unless he did so Miss Horton would construct an 
epic from a slip of the tongue. At the same time, he really 
did feel grateful to her for not rushing off in a state of 
excitement to fetch outside help. 

“T wish you’d take my arm,” she said when they came out 


Good Friday 159 


of church, “and let me walk back with you to the Vicarage.” 

But Mark was neither weak enough nor grateful enough 
to do this. 

“No, no, Miss Horton. Thank you very much, but I am 
perfectly able to get back alone along the valley. Besides, 
you have your bicycle to support, and your dog to look after. 
By the way, what’s become of Rover?” 

Miss Horton tried to whistle, but whistling was not an 
accomplishment of hers even on the calmest days. Now, 
when the gusty outriders of the coming gale were galloping 
by, a single blade of grass could have made a more service- 
able noise. She called feebly once or twice, but her voice 
was tossed upon the wind like the faint chirrup of a rock- 
pipit. 

“He must have gone home,” she said, and in her anxiety 
over the dog’s whereabouts she gave up pestering Mark to 
let her escort him to the Vicarage and, mounting her bicycle, 
set out up Pendhu hill in an oscillating spiral of motion. 

Mark’s supper of rice and lentils, which was the first food 
he had tasted all day, was more than sufficient to restore his 
normal vision of commonplace objects and to banish the 
tendency of his nerves to perceive beyond their accidents an 
apparently significant but actually caricatured substance. At 
the same time he refused to admit that his behaviour toward 
the golfing schoolmasters had been light-headed. He was 
convinced that he should not have acted otherwise after a 
heavy meal of roast beef. The only thing he regretted about 
this Good Friday was his cowardice over the ceremony of 
creeping to the Cross. That alone prevented his sitting at 
peace by the fireside, hoping lazily that Aunt Penelope and 
Jennifer would not crash round the kitchen much longer, 
and turning over the pages of a book. 

Suddenly the rattle of crockery ceased, and an unusual 
hubbub of excited conversation took its place. He was won- 
dering what could have caused this discussion when Aunt 
Penelope burst into the room. 

“You’re wanted at once, Mr. Lidderdale. Miss Horton 
have sent Arthur Tangye and his sister Susie to say you’re 
wanted at once.” , 


160 The Heavenly Ladder 


Mark’s fancy flew over a dozen possible reasons for the 
urgent message on his way to the kitchen, where he found 
Susie and Arthur Tangye, round-eyed and rather pale, 
waiting for him. 

“However they come by theirselves along that great dark 
lonely road I’m sure I don’t know,” Aunt Penelope ex- 
claimed. ‘And no lantern nor nothing. Only the wisht old 
moon to light ’°em and skeer ’em worse nor ever. Spake up, 
my young handsomes, and tell Passon how you come, while 
I find you a piece of saffron cake.” 

“Miss Horton sent us,” Arthur began in that remote treble 
of his that was always a prelude to one of his difficult and 
conscientious narratives. “She come over to mother with 
the tears running down her cheeks,” he went on, ‘‘and she 
said could Walter or Jimmie run to the Vicarage and fetch 
Mr. Lidderdale, and when mother said Walter and Jimmie 
weren't come back yet she begun to cry out aloud.” 

“TI never saw an old maid cry like she in all the days 
of my life,” Susie corroborated, and then realizing the size 
of her audience she hid beneath her arm a shy smile and a 
blush. 

“But why did she want somebody to come here in such a 
hurry?” Mark asked. 

But Arthur could not be short-circuited like this. For 
him his own nocturnal adventure and the necessity that com- 
pelled him to undertake it was not less important than Miss 
Horton’s reason for calling upon his services. 

“She begun to cry out aloud,” he chanted, “and she said 
whatever would she do if no one couldn’t run to the Vicarage 
and ask Mr. Lidderdale to come to once and speak to Mr. 
Stithian.” 

“Mr. Stithian?” Mark repeated in bewilderment. “How 
on earth does Mr. Stithian come into the story ?” 

“T only worked for Mr. Stithian but once,’ Toby Prawle 
put in from his corner by the fire, “and I mind it well, for 
I were tealing potatoes, and he come behind me and said, 
‘Is this the way you teal potatoes?’ And with that the man 
give me a gurt kick and told me to clear off out of his field. 


Good Friday 161 


And I cleared off, and from that day to this I never spoke 
to the man.” 

“Toby,” his aunt demanded, “an’t I told you a score of 
times if you’re left to come and sit in here you’ve got to 
keep your tongue still?” 

However, Toby’s interruption had enabled Arthur to get 
his tale into shape, and he went ahead now without digres- 
sions. 

“Mr. Stithian caught Miss Horton’s dog running his 
sheep, and he brought ’un down on a rope, and he told Miss 
Horton he were going to shoot ’un, and Mr. Scobell weren’t 
come back from business, and Mrs. Scobell screamed when 
she saw the gun and locked herself upstairs with boy Frank 
and boy Eddie, and Miss Horton run across to our cottage, 
and Walter and Jimmie weren’t come home, and I said I’d 
run to the Vicarage if someone would come with me, and 
Miss Horton kissed me, which made I mad, but I come just 
the same, because maid Susie said she weren’t afeared of the 
Devil getting a-hold of her because it were Good Friday 
and the old Devil couldn’t do nothing on Good Friday.” 

“And she kissed me too,’ Susie put in. “But I didn’t 
mind so much as boy Arthur.” 

Lily and Dick Prawle stared at two children who were 
capable of such adventures. The thought of coming all the 
way along that valley unprotected by several grown-ups 
filled them with silent amazement. 

“T’ll put on my boots and be ready in a moment,’ Mark 
said. He did not know how he was going to deal with the 
angry farmer, but it was clearly his duty to go, and he was 
glad of the opportunity to pay back Miss Horton some of 
her well-meant kindness without the possibility of any senti- 
ment’s creeping into the action. 

“T’ll give the both of them a piece of saffron cake,” Aunt 
Penelope announced, thrusting her hairy jaw up to Mark’s 
face. “Jennifer, cut the cake, will ’ee?r” 

Jennifer Prawle obeyed her aunt like a clockwork figure 
that has been given a poke to set it moving. 

“All right, my young lovely,” she assured Arthur. “Only 
Wait a minute, and you shall have some big slice of cake.” 


162 The Heavenly Ladder 


Arthur and Susie were still munching when Mark, taking 
the disengaged hand of each of them, set out to cope with 
the situation created by Miss Horton’s dog. 

“Susie,” Arthur said to his sister after a few minutes of 
silent progress, “do ’ee feel frightened now?” 

“T never didn’t feel frightened,’ Susie asserted stoutly. 
“?*Twas you who was all the time saying you could see 
ghosteses behind the fuzz.” 

“Well, so there was ghosteses,” Arthur insisted. “Only 
I weren’t frightened of ’em.” 

“°Twas no such a thing, boy Arthur, and you was fright- 
ened, because you held on to my hand so tight as wax.” 

“No, I didn’t then. I didn’t do no such a thing, Mr. Lid- 
derdale. And if I did, the maid held on just so tight to me.” 

“T expect that the truth of the matter is you were really 
both of you a little bit frightened,’ Mark said, and the 
two small hands he held gave his a squeeze of assent. “But 
it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve felt a little frightened 
once or twice myself.” 

“When we come to that stone... 

“Don’t say the name, boy Arthur, because ’tis rude,” Susie 
broke in. 

“T weren’t going to say the name. Look to yourself, you 
maid, and don’t always be telling me. When we come to 
that great round stone by the steps across the stream we 
ran so fast as foxes.” 

“My! we did run fast,’ Susie agreed with a little gurgle 
of retrospective terror. “Some do say that the old stone 
belongs to follow ’ee and if you haven’t been good all the 
year you can’t run away from it. But ’tis only an old tale, 
I believe.” 

“No, I don’t think that sounds at all probable,’ Mark 
agreed. 

“Please ?” 

“T’m sure that the stone will never move an inch after any- 
body,” Mark assured her. 

“Badgers ’ll follow ’ee,’ Arthur put in. “Miles an’ miles 
an’ miles, a badger will.” 


39 


Good Friday 163 


“Hark, listen how the wind do blow,” Susie exclaimed in 
awe. “But we can’t feel it here.” 

“We're sheltered by the slope of the valley,’ Mark said 
with an affectionate downward glance at the two small 
figures that trotted beside him, taking two steps for every 
one of his. There was no counter for pluck, he thought 
regretfully, and he decided to mark a couple of white ones 
with a V for valour when the money-boxes were brought up 
next Sunday afternoon. 

“Here’s the old stone,” Arthur announced. “It don’t 
look so big as it did look when we came up along.” 

“T dare ’ee to kick ’un as we do go past,” Susie challenged. 

Forthwith Arthur spurned the monster with his boot, and 
his sister was reduced to a silence that lasted until the trees 
of Roscorla farm rose up before them in the moonlight. 

“Mr. Lidderdale,” Arthur said, ‘if I was to tell ’ee some- 
thing, will you promise not to tell who ’twas told ’ee?” 

Mark gave his word. 

“Mr. Jago of Roscorla said that he’d a mind to fling a 
pail of dung over ’ee whenever he did look up and see you 
go past the town-place.” 

“Why, what have I done to offend Mr. Jago?” Mark in- 
quired in some surprise, for he had been pondering the hos- 
tility of nature, and Arthur’s information now brought him 
suddenly face to face with the hostility of man, about which 
there was much less room for speculation. 

“He belongs to hate you,” Arthur avowed. “And when- 
ever he do see any of us children who belong to go church 
he mumbles to himself and do glare at we. But don’t tell 
anyone I told ’ee, because he might get ugly and turn us 
out of our house.” 

This contingency had not struck Mark before, and he 
began to wonder if he should be able to endure the whole 
Tangye family in the Vicarage, for if they were turned 
out of their cottage on account of the church it would fall 
on him to see that they did not suffer by it. And what 
would Aunt Penelope say to that? However, perhaps that 
black-browed. fanatic Jago would confine his malice to him- 


164 The Heavenly Ladder 


self. Meanwhile, Mr. Stithian, a fanatic of another com- 
plexion, was the problem of the moment. 

As soon as Mark and the two children emerged from 
the shadow of Roscorla into the wind and moonshine of 
Nancepean, Miss Horton came hurrying up the road to 
meet them, her aspect distraught by grief and anxiety, her 
hair dishevelled. 

“Oh, Vicar, how kind of you to come! I do hope the 
walk won’t be too much for you. I should never have sent 
for you if I had dared to come myself, but I was afraid to 
leave Rover with Mr. Stithian. He’s sitting in my room 
now with his gun across his knee. And poor Rover is tied 
to the leg of the table. You know he’s never done such a 
thing in his life. I can’t believe it. It must be a plot to 
drive me away from Nancepean. I was painting once on Mr. 
Stithian’s land, and he asked me if I knew that I was tres- 
passing, and I said quite in joke that the sky was free to all. 
And ever since then he has disliked me. And now he says 
that Rover has worried twenty-nine of his lambs and seven 
of his ewes, and that either 1 must write him a cheque for 
£120 or he’s going to shoot Rover before he goes to bed to- 
night. Oh, what shall I do? I can’t write a cheque for 
£120, because the money I was expecting from the sale of 
some pictures hasn’t come in yet. I feel half distracted. 
If my beloved Rover is shot, I shall go straight off and 
throw myself over the cliff.” 

During this speech, which was delivered to the accom- 
paniment of gestures and punctuated with sobs, the two chil- 
dren stood regarding her with a concentrated and absolutely 
motionless interest of the kind they would have accorded 
to a pony that was kicking over the traces and liable at any 
moment to put its hooves through the splash-board of a 
trap. 

Poor Miss Horton, however, was too much upset to mind 
what anybody thought about her. 

“Thank you very much, Arthur and you, Sophie, or is it 
Susie? Oh yes, I see it’s Susie. Wait a minute—no, I must 
give you a little present to-morrow morning. You see, 
Vicar, Mr. Scobell isn’t back yet and that’s been worrying 


Good Friday 165 


poor Mrs. Scobell all the evening, and of course when Mr. 
Stithian suddenly appeared in the doorway with his gun she 
thought it was a murderer and ran-upstairs and locked her- 
self in her bedroom with the two boys. I thought of going to 
fetch William John Evans, but when Mrs. Tangye kindly 
let two of her children go for you I thought it would be bet- 
ter. What is to be done? Oh, my poor old dog, my poor old 
dog! What should I do if I lost him?” 

Probably Arthur and Susie still had hopes of seeing some 
tremendous drama with a gun take place, for while Mark 
followed Miss Horton up the zigzag path of the front gar- 
den, they remained by the gate in the same attitude of utter 
absorption. 

Mr. Fred Stithian of Pentine was a large, florid man, with 
a trim red beard and a pair of very small blue eyes that 
twinkled sometimes at the humour of other people’s discom- 
fiture or pain, but generally only with greed or lust. A side 
of an ox would not have looked more out of place in the 
flimsy front room of Tintagel than he did sitting on a 
spindleshanked painted chair with his double-barrelled gun 
across his fat thighs. He did not get up when Miss Horton 
and Mark came in, contenting himself with a nod that went 
beyond curtness and touched insolence. 

“Well, Miss Horton, have you settled what you’re going 
to do? J mustn’t bide all night or my missus will be won- 
dering where I’m to.” 

“Tf Miss Horton’s dog has worried any of your sheep, 
Stithian,’ Mark said, “the proper course for you is to 
sue her for damages, not come down here and bully a 
woman.” 

Mark’s intonation made the farmer sit up so abruptly 
and heavily that his chair creaked in every joint and seemed 
likely to break at any moment beneath the weight. 

“And where do you come into this little matter, Parson? 
You’re not in the pulpit now. Keep your preaching for 
them as it suits. It don’t suit me.” 

“If you can’t speak civilly, you’d better get out of here,” 
Mark told him. ‘You'll shoot nobody’s dog to-night.” 


166 The Heavenly Ladder 


The farmer jumped up and crashed the butt of his gun 
on the floor, which set Rover off barking. 

“Tf that bloody dog don’t keep his mouth shut, I'll brain 
him where he lays,” the farmer swore. 

“You'll brain nobody in this room to-night, Stithian,” 
said Mark coldly. “Miss Horton, will you go next door 
and ask Mr. Dale with my compliments to come in? I 
should like him to see the way one of his local preachers 
behaves.” 

“That’s enough of it from you, Parson Lidderdale,” the 
farmer said savagely. “I'll take no sauciness from any 
man, least of all from you.” 

“Do you really want me to fetch Mr. Dale?” Miss Horton 
asked. 

“Yes, please.” 

The two men did not speak until she came back with the 
minister, who evidently did not at all want to be dragged 
into the business. However, he had to listen to both stories, 
at the end of which he told the farmer that he was liable 
to put himself in the wrong by his high-handed action. 

“IT sympathize with you, Mr. Stithian, but I cannot help 
feeling that Mr. Lidderdale is right and that your proper 
course is to sue Miss Horton for the damage her dog has 
done.” 

“T’d liefer shoot the dog,” the farmer declared. 

“No, no,” cried its mistress. “You mustn’t be so cruel!” 
You can’t be so cruel!” 

“There’s no question of shooting the dog,” Mark said 
impatiently. “Why don’t you tell Mr. Stithian not to 
make such a fool of himself, Cass? If the dog has really 
worried one hundred and twenty pounds’ worth of sheep, 
which I doubt, Mr. Stithian would not be content with 
shooting the dog, for that would put his case out of court 
right away. At the same time, I dare say that the dog may 
have chased his sheep, and if he did, Mr. Stithian is justi- 
fied in asking Miss Horton to send the dog away.” 

Mark felt a twinge in thus taking advantage of the: 
situation to get rid of both Miss Horton and her dog, but 
it was too good an occasion to be missed. With a bad 


Good Friday 167 


grace the farmer admitted that perhaps when daylight came 
it would be found that the actual damage done by the dog 
would be less than he had supposed. Therefore, if Miss 
Horton would agree to keep the dog under control until she 
sent it away, and would promise to pay for any ewes or 
lambs it had actually worried, he would forgo his right to 
shoot it out of hand. 

“But mind you,’ he declared to Mark, “I don’t make 
this offer because you saw fit to interfere in what don’t con- 
cern you, and I’ll say right out now in front of Mr. Dale 
that if you try and interfere with us down here, there’s some 
of us will start in to interfere with you.” 

When a few minutes later Mark set out back to the 
Vicarage, Miss Horton ran after him to ask what time 
he would be hearing confessions on Holy Saturday. 

“I’m not hearing any confessions,” he said quickly. 
“You'd better walk up to Chypie. Mr. Kennedy will be 
hearing confessions between five and six.” 

What a merciful thing, Mark thought, that Rover should 
have behaved like this. No need now to import a Great 
Dane. He wondered what skies would next attract Miss 
Horton’s brush. Had he not read somewhere of sunsets 
in the Painted Desert of Arizona? Or Paraguay? But 
Paraguay was open to objections from Miss Horton’s point 
of view. 

Unfortunately for Mark’s plans Miss Horton found a 
good home for Rover; but she herself decided to stay in 
Nancepean without him. 


CHAPTER XI 
THE EASTER VESTRY 


ARK had been pondering for some time whom he 

should nominate as Vicar’s warden, and he finally 
decided on Albert Prawle. He fancied that this would be the 
very gesture of contempt that was wanted to show his 
opponents how little he heeded them. Moreover, it would 
be a lesson in democracy to some of the farmers who 
supposed that they alone counted in the civil and religious 
life of the community. The lack of landed gentry in the 
neighbourhood had given them an undue sense of their 
importance. Albert Prawle was a simple labourer, with 
nothing to distinguish him from the other labourers round 
about except perhaps that he was rather more stupid; but 
during the last two or three months he had been coming 
to church very regularly, and this could not be attributed 
to base motives, because when Mark had first engaged his 
aunt and wife to look after his house Albert had never 
come near the church, which clearly showed that policy 
played no part in his recent attendance. Nor could any- 
body accuse Albert of cherishing ambitions above his sta- 
tion. That meek pink-faced little man with straw-coloured 
moustache and watery pale blue eyes had never cherished an 
ambition in his life; while of whatever else his enemies 
in the parish accused him they could not say that in ap- 
pointing Albert to be his churchwarden Mark was shirking 
his own share in the fight. 

The only person in whom Mark confided his intention 
was William John Evans, who promptly said that if Albert 
Prawle was to be one of the churchwardens nothing should 
induce him to be the other. 

“Why on earth not?” Mark asked irritably. 

“Because ‘tis plum foolishness to make a man like Albert 

168 


The Easter Vestry 169 


Prawle churchwarden,”’ replied William John, red with 
indignation. “’Tis making a mock of religion. Why, every- 
body will laugh at him, and I won’t be laughed at along- 
side of him. I’ve done my best for ’ee, Mr. Lidderdale, 
though you’ve gone against my advice from start to finish, 
but this is too much. There’s not a soul to Nancepean who 
won't laugh at the notion of Albert Prawle being church- 
warden. You might so well make a bullock churchwarden.”’ 

“Our Lord didn’t choose His disciples from the leading 
farmers in the neighbourhood,” Mark pointed out. 

“What He done isn’t here nor there. If He'd lived to 
Nancepean, He might ’a done different; and from what 
I can make out of it, He might ’a done a bit better where 
He was. None of they disciples was much good to Him. 
Why, only the other day you was carrying on in the pulpit 
yourself about the way Peter and the rest of ’*em mucked 
things up. I wouldn’t say if He’d have chose His disciples 
a bit better as there mightn’t have been no crucifixion. But 
leave that as may be, ’tis no less than a slap in the face to 
Our Father Which Art In Heaven to make a half-natural 
like Albert Prawle churchwarden, so as Albert, a penny 
man, can go lording it with the bag over the half-crowners. 
What the missus ’ll say, I don’t know.” 

Mark hoped that Mrs. Evans would change her husband’s 
point of view; but she was actually more indignant than 
he, and not even the fact that Miss Lambourne would be 
cheated of having her brother Job made vicar’s warden, 
to which she had confidently looked forward, mitigated Mrs. 
Evans’s anger. In fact, she went so far as to threaten 
that Donald should not be allowed to come any longer 
to Mark’s Sunday-school. 

“°Twill be a pretty church wi’ old Penelope and Jennifer 
Prawle setting themselves up as the ladies of Nancepean. 
We shall see ’em coming driving down of a Sunday morning 
next, I suppose, the whole hungry crowd of ’em. Well, I 
don’t often belong to think William John do have much 
sense; but he did have a little this time when he said he 
wouldn’t serve as churchwarden another minute. Have you 
handed over the keys and accounts yet, William John? Mr. 


170 The Heavenly Ladder 


Albert Prawle will be wanting to see that all’s in order.” 

Mark’s resolution was only strengthened by what he 
thought was this display of petty jealousy, and after supper 
that night he sent for Albert and told him of the office 
to which he intended to call him, 

Albert looked puzzled and rather frightened at the news. 

“T don’t know what Mr. Jago will do,” Albert said 
doubtfully. “He weren’t best pleased when we belonged 
going church, but with that bay mare of his he was afeard 
to get another carter. But I reckon he’d as soon sell the 
mare as see me churchwarden. *Twouldn’t seem hardly 
fitty to be ordering about a churchwarden, though he do be 
a local preacher.” 

“Mr. Jago isn’t the only farmer round here,” Mark said. 
“There are plenty of others who would be glad of your 
services.” 

“It'll mean a black coat,’”’ Albert continued. “And that’s 
a thing I’ve never been able to put my hands on. I heard 
tell of one for sale to Rosemarket, but when I got there 
and see it twas more of a green than a black and the sleeveses 
was too long and ’twere too big altogether. The man who 
wore it was a wrastler, and a powerful big upstanding kind 
of a man. Aunt Penelope said it make me look like a flea 
in a blanket. Aw, too big it were altogether.” 

“You can get along without a black coat for the present, 
Albert.” 

But Albert shook his head. 

“No man living ever heard tell of a churchwarden wi’out 
a black coat.” 

“You can wear a cassock and a surplice,” Mark told him, 
“and sit in the choir.” 

Aunt Penelope, who had been routing about on the out- 
skirts of the conversation, broke in at this point: 

“Never listen to him, Mr. Lidderdale. Never heed him. 
Albert, if Mr. Lidderdale do make ’ee a chichwadden, a 
chichwadden you'll be, my son, or your Aunt Penelope ’Il 
chichwadden ’ee out of her house. If Mr. Lidderdale said I 
was to be chichwadden, a chichwadden I’d be and see Jago 
and the rest of them to the old Devil where they belong. A 


The Easter Vestry 17I 


fine thing when you belong saying what you will be and what 
you won’t be, Albert. You do knaw well you’ve never be- 
longed to say what you'll be since you was born. You'll 
stay where you’re put, my son, and you’ve been put chich- 
wadden, so sit still and hold your tongue. Your father was 
always a poor mean-spirited emmet of a man, and you’re 
just such another, I believe.” 

“Now, Penelope, that’s quite enough of your chatter,” 
Mark interrupted. 

The Easter Vestry was held in the Parish Hall, which 
was packed in the expectation of seeing Major Drumgold 
put the new Vicar in his place once and for all. The 
resignation of William John Evans had greatly encouraged 
Mark’s opponents, for not only was he the only supporter 
of any substance, but his withdrawal made it possible to 
elect Major Drumgold as people’s warden without any of that 
open unpleasantness, the elimination of which plays such 
an important part in the externals of Cornish intercourse. 
As soon as the Major was elected, Mark nominated Albert 
Prawle as vicar’s warden. The formal announcement, al- 
though a rumour of his intention had run round the country- 
side, stupefied the meeting into absolute silence for a minute 
or two. When Mark looked at Albert to see how he was 
bearing the greatness thrust upon him, he was astonished 
to find that the little man had suddenly acquired dignity. 
There he sat frowning at the hostile parishioners and some- 
how expressing in his attitude that whatever his Vicar said 
or did the Vicar’s warden was ready to say or do likewise, 
let the consequences to himself be what they might. It was 
as if the indomitable soul of Aunt Penelope had forsaken 
that tough body and entered the softer abode of her great- 
nephew. He had always been known to have a firm hand 
and a cool head with a bad-tempered horse, and it began to 
look as if he would be able to bring those qualities to bear 
on bad-tempered humanity. Mark could have clapped his 
hands with delight. 

Major Drumgold now rose to prefer his indictment. 

“Gentlemen, I do not often have the pleasure of find- 
ing myself on the same platform, so to speak, as yourselves, 


172 The Heavenly Ladder 


but political differences are buried like the proverbial hatchet 
when our deepest religious feelings have been stirred as they 
—er—have been stirred recently by—er—the—er—behaviour 
of the Reverend Mark Lidderdale, our new Vicar. I believe 
that I am voicing the general opinion of the many friends I 
find round me if I say that we are pained—er—pained and 
horrified and—er—wounded by the high-handed manner in 
which Mr. Lidderdale has ridden roughshod over our deepest 
religious feelings. I do not believe that I should be putting 
it too strongly if I said that he had trampled them under- 
foot—trampled them underfoot—trampled them underfoot—. 
er foot!’ The Major’s repetition of the phrase was not so 
much due to any nice appreciation of its rhetorical effect as 
to not being able for the moment to find the heads of his 
indictment which had been noted in pencil on an envelope. 
“Trampled underfoot—oh yes, first of all, I wish to say that 
I find my task a particularly difficult one, because personally 
[I have nothing whatever against Mr. Lidderdale, and I 
hope that he will take whatever I have to say about his 
practices in a purely—in an absolutely—er—um .. .” 

“Pickwickian sense,” Mark suggested. 

The Major blinked. 

“In an absolutely unpersonal, I should say impersonal 
way. First of all, I believe that I am voicing the opinions 
of the many friends I see round me to-day, when I insist 
that we do not like extreme services. We are simple 
people. We have been brought up for better or for worse 
to believe that the practices which Mr. Lidderdale is trying 
to ram down our throats were done away with once and 
for all at the Reformation. I do not accuse Mr. Lidderdale 
of being in league with the Pope. I say I do not accuse 
him of this. Nor do I believe that in holding these elaborate 
services he is actuated by any except sincere if mistaken 
motives. No! Mr. Lidderdale is no sheep in wolf’s 
clothing. And I am only sorry that some of his practices 
might lead anybody to suppose that he was. Gentlemen, 
we do not ask for much. We only ask that Mr. Lidderdale 
should give us the service we have been accustomed to since 
our mother’s knee. We do not want vestments. We do not 


The Easter Vestry 173 


want incense. We do not want crucifixes and processions 
and bowings and scrapings and images and all this talk 
about the Virgin Mary. We do not want confession and 
absolution, when in the privacy of our own rooms we can 
speak to our Maker when and how we like. We want the 
dear old simple service of the Prayer Book. We want the 
Bible. We want Mattins reverently sung at eleven o’clock. 
We do not want the Mass. I would ask Mr. Lidderdale to 
look back to his own young days when his grandfather, old 
Parson Trehawke, was Vicar of Nancepean. Can he honestly 
tell us that he substituted the Mass for Morning Prayer? 
Did he deck himself out in all manner of gorgeous garments ? 
No! 

“But I have other and graver charges to bring against 
Mr. Lidderdale. How comes it that without what is called 
a facility from the Bishop of this diocese he has taken 
upon himself to remove the beautiful and simple wooden 
altar to the side of the church in order to erect in its 
place what I do not hesitate to call an abominable block 
of hideous stone? Gentlemen, that new altar has got to 
be replaced. I ask you as parishioners of—er—this parish 
to record by a show of hands your solemn protest against 
this high-handed action of Mr. Lidderdale in meddling 
with the fabric of the parish church, after which I shall in- 
vite you to sign your names to a protest which I shall for- 
ward to the Bishop of Bodmin for his attention. 

“Thirdly, I wish to call Mr. Lidderdale’s attention to 
the—er—incalculable harm he is doing to Nancepean by 
driving away visitors from the church. It has been my 
privilege to be one of the prime movers in forming our 
Golf Club, which nobody here will deny has brought a 
great deal of money into the neighbourhood. Those visitors 
are not parishioners, but they have certain claims upon us, 
and they ask to be allowed to worship in the way they are 
accustomed. They consider that for all the religious ad- 
vantages they can get from coming to Nancepean they might 
as well be abroad. Many of them would prefer an honest 
Roman Catholic service which they would not expect to 
attend. I do not wish to revive an incident which I am 


174 The Heavenly Ladder 


sure Mr. Lidderdale was the first to regret, but it is my 
painful duty to say that if members are going to be interfered 
with in the middle of their golf the consequences for Mr. 
Lidderdale are likely to be very grave indeed.” 

Major Drumgold then took the vote of protest and sat 
down, on which Mark rose. 

“TI confess that I might perhaps have been a little more 
deeply impressed by Major Drumgold’s eloquent speech,” 
he said, “if on looking round the hall at his listeners I 
could detect any of them who were regular communicants. 
I see Mr. Dale of Tallack, who built the chapel. I see Mr. 
Stithian of Pentine, and Mr. Jago of Roscorla, who are both 
local preachers and pillars of that chapel. I see Mr. Martin 
of Nankervis, who is another regular attendant at that chapel, 
and various others who would be perfectly justified in pro- 
testing if their minister offended their congregational feel- 
ings. I am not going to call them religious feelings, because 
I do not believe that people whose religious feelings have 
been—was it trampled upon?—content themselves with at- 
tending meetings. They either suffer in silence or they do 
something violent.” 

“Mind we don’t do something violent,’ shouted Fred 
Stithian, who was still smarting from Mark’s interference 
with him on Good Friday. 

“What I want you all to understand,’ Mark went on, 
“is that I do not regard myself as the servant of my congre- 
gation, but as the servant of God. That being so, no pro- 
tests by my congregation will have the slightest effect on me. 
I am sorry to have to take up this attitude, but it would 
not be fair to let you waste your time bothering the Bishop 
in the expectation that you will compel me to surrender. 
I shall not. It is humbug for most of you to come here 
to-day and talk about being deprived of anything. I am not 
going to make my church a coloured supplement of the 
chapel.” 

“And what about turning me away from the harmonium 
which I’ve belonged to play for six years?” Tom Pascoe 
shouted from the back of the hall. 

“And was paid five pounds a year to do it,’ Albert Prawle 


The Easter Vestry 175 


shouted back. “And all the time blayguarding those as paid 
’ee,”’ 

The sequel to this meeting was a letter from the Bishop 
asking Mark to come and see him. 

It was a blue and white April day when Mark made 
the journey to Bodmin. The platform of the station was 
crowded with jolly people in tweeds who had arrived for 
the annual daffodil show. The way they greeted one an- 
other and the consciousness they all displayed of interest 
and enjoyment made Mark feel lonely, and he had a 
momentary pang of envy because he was not shaking hands 
with old friends from the other end of the Duchy, or going 
to find out if So-and-so’s new white trumpets were as won- 
derful as last year. He felt like a barbarian when he passed 
through these talkative jolly groups and walked on alone to 
Lis Escop. He found the Bishop much more frail than when 
he had visited him in the autumn, and he greatly hoped that 
too much would not be demanded of him, for he knew that 
he should find it hard to withstand that courteous and schol- 
arly and holy man. 

“I’m really sorry to bring you on such a long journey,” 
the Bishop said, “but these discussions are difficult to carry 
on by correspondence. I chose to-day in the hope that you 
might be glad to avail yourself of the opportunity to see 
the daffodil show. And now tell me about your troubles at 
Nancepean.” 

Mark gave him as brief and as fair an account as he 
could of the parish, the troubles and difficulties of which 
when they were related in this dignified and tranquil room 
appeared petty enough. 

The Bishop clasped his hands and made a steeple of his two 
forefingers, over which he looked gravely at Mark. 

“We will put on one side for a moment the question of 
the advisableness of certain ceremonies in the present con- 
dition of your parish, ceremonies and customs that I should 
not feel justified in forbidding, and we will arrive at what 
I should consider definitely opposed to the spirit as well 
as to the letter of the Prayer Book. Major Drumgold, I 
think that is his name, says you are in the habit of saying 


176 The Heavenly Ladder 


portions of the Communion service in Latin. Is that so?” 

“Only the private devotions of the priest,” Mark replied. 

“Yes, I have heard that quibble before, Mr. Lidderdale, 
and I may say that I dislike it intensely. I assume that you 
refer either to the original Secreta, the prayer said in a low 
voice at the end of the Offertory in the Roman Liturgy, or 
more loosely to the silent recitation of the Canon. In 
other words, you are not quite sure in your own mind if 
the English Liturgy is complete. Well, even were that so, 
which of course would be an absurd postulate, there would 
still be no justification for introducing supplementary prayers 
in Latin.” 

“Tf your lordship insists, I am willing to give up the use 
of Latin,” said Mark, who could not pretend even to himself 
that there really was the least justification, logical or spiritual 
or historical, for introducing Latin into the English Liturgy. 

“Thank you, Mr. Lidderdale. I appreciate your readi- 
ness to accept my ruling. Now, with regard to non-com- 
municating attendance at the Holy Eucharist. Personally 
I am probably as anxious as yourself that people should 
consider the Holy Eucharist as the great service round 
which the whole of our Christian worship revolves; but 
in view of the rubrical directions in the Prayer Book I do not 
think that until those directions have been amended we are 
justified in saying the Holy Eucharist without at least three 
communicants. The Prayer Book is quite plain on that 
point, and both you and I have vowed to obey it. Surely 
it is possible, Mr. Lidderdale, for you to provide this mini- 
mum of communicants ?” 

“T am deeply grieved, my lord, but on that point I 
cannot see my way to obey your ruling,’ Mark said, “TI 
feel too strongly on that point to give way. If my services 
were going to be nothing more than Morning and Evening 
Prayer, I should not feel justified in remaining at Nance- 
pean.” 

“Nevertheless, Mr. Lidderdale, I fear that I must insist 
on your canonical obedience.” 

“Then we are at a deadlock already,” Mark replied, “for 
I cannot obey you on this point. I am prepared to give 


The Easter Vestry 177 


up much, but not that, and if your lordship will forgive 
my frankness, I do not understand how you can expect me 
to surrender on this point. I thought I had made it clear 
that worshippers in my church are very scarce. A condi- 
tion that might be accepted in a large parish is impossible in 
Nancepean. Moreover, I venture to think that, if your 
lordship had not been petitioned on other grounds, you 
would not have taken up this position about non-communi- 
cating attendance.” 

“That is quite possible,’ the Bishop agreed. “But you 
have only yourself to blame for that. This new altar, for 
instance, which you have put up without reference to me 
and without any attempt to obtain a faculty, is so flagrantly 
illegal that without any question if your parishoners take the 
matter into the consistory court you will be ordered to re- 
move it, and nothing I could say or do would have the least 
effect. J am bound to add that I think you have done the 
cause you have at heart a grave disservice by your conduct. 
And I must repeat that by compelling me to take notice of 
things, to which with a little tact on your part I might have 
managed to remain blind, you have only yourself to blame.” 

“T am sorry to be so intransigent,” Mark replied, “but 
I believe your lordship will think better of me for refusing 
plainly to give up what I believe to be right than if I were 
to promise renunciation and not perform that promise.” 

The Bishop passed one hand wearily over his forehead. 

“T shall have to consider my course of action.” 

Then he fell into a reverie, his hands clasped again, his 
forefinger raised steeplewise, above which his holy face 
seemed like a sky the calm radiance of which was clouded 
for the moment by grief. 

“To consider my course of action,” he repeated to him- 
self in half a whisper. Then, looking steadily at Mark, 
he resumed: “Are you convinced that there is no spiritual 
selfishness in the way you have begun your work at Nance- 
pean? I cannot help feeling that Almighty God loves best the 
humble and that if you desire Him to bless your work you 
will pray first for humility. I cannot believe that He requires 
from His priests the assertion of Himself at the expense of 


178 The Heavenly Ladder 


the weak and uninstructed. I should rather believe that, 
if you surrendered something for His sake that you for the 
moment thought vital, your reward would be boundless in 
the grace that He would pour down upon those souls at 
present untouched and in a way—please don’t misunderstand 
me—in a way now being driven away from His presence.” 

“But, my lord,’ Mark exclaimed in astonishment, “at 
what stage is the tail to cease wagging the dog?” 

“Better the tail should wag the dog than that for the 
sake of a form you should clip the tail short. But I do 
not ask you to give me canonical obedience, Mr. Lidder- 
dale, unless you can give it to me for the love of God. 
I do not ask you to surrender anything, even saying the 
Secreta in Latin, unless you can do it for the love of God. 
You alluded just now to your Sunday-school, and I felt 
that your efforts in that direction were being blessed, be- 
cause you loved these children through God and through 
them loved God. Have you not already made many con- 
cessions to help them? Would you be as severe with them 
liturgically as with their parents? Would you not be more 
patient and more charitable with them? Yet in the sight of 
God we are all little children.” 

“I will do what your lordship requires,” Mark said 
abruptly. 

“Not what my lordship requires and not what I require, 
Mr. Lidderdale, but what God requires. I do not want 
to feel in my prayers for you that I persuaded you against 
your better judgment because I knew how to handle you 
courteously and tactfully or even because you were sorry 
for an old man who would soon, very soon be called upon 
to answer to the Lord God for all his misdirections, his 
blunders and his follies, his sins, his insufficiencies, and his 
talents. I want to feel that you will do what I ask because 
you have been granted the wisdom that is from above, which 
is first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated, 
full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without 
hypocrisy, for, as St. James goes on to say, the fruit of 
righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace. 
And now about this altar, which I have no doubt is a great 


The Easter Vestry 179 


improvement, we must hope that Major Drumgold and 
his friends will be appeased by your concessions and that 
they will take no further steps in the matter. But don’t do 
things like that again without the necessary faculty. And 
now do let me advise you to visit the daffodil show. I wish 
much that I could go with you.” 


CHAPTER XII 
THE ECHOING GREEN 


ARK felt absolutely bewildered by his surrender when 

he got back to Nancepean and began to realize to how 
much or, perhaps it would be truer to say, to how little he had 
committed himself. In the first place he had a hard struggle 
with his pride, for all his opponents in the parish took to 
themselves the credit for showing how a turbulent priest 
should be handled, and Mark could not help being aware of 
the atmosphere of self-satisfaction over his discomfiture. He 
suffered most from his defeat by Major Drumgold, who 
until then had been thoroughly despised by the natives. Nor 
did the minister forget to rub it in. 

“Why, Lidderdale, I never suspected that Major Drum- 
gold had it in him. I hear he fairly gave it to the Bishop. 
I shall be having him up against me soon as a candidate for 
the presidency of the Fishing Company. By the way, 
you made a bad mistake in choosing Albert Prawle as church- 
warden. I don’t remember anything that has put the people’s 
backs up more than that. I know you meant it for the best, 
but it was a bad mistake.” 

However, pride was a straightforward temptation that 
could be fought. Mark was much more worried by the 
fear that in surrendering so much he was betraying his 
Faith. The Bishop was old, and after the many battles of 
his career peace must seem to him of all states the most de- 
sirable. But was it? And was there really any more peace 
in Nancepean because he had been persuaded to give way? 
Not one of his opponents bore him any greater goodwill 
therefore, and his supporters could not but be shaken by the 
triumph of the other side. It might lead to their com- 
plete discouragement. It might end in his having nobody 
except the Prawles and Miss Horton. 

180 


The Echoing Green 181 


Mark tried hard to recapture the good graces of Mrs. 
Evans, but she would not forgive him for making Albert 
Prawle churchwarden. She still came to church, but her 
presence cast a gloom of critical disapproval over every- 
thing, and any chance that Mark might have had of getting 
back on the old terms with her was spoilt by his acquiring 
the habit of going to tea twice a week with Miss Lambourne. 
Not that Miss Lambourne was any less annoyed over Albert 
Prawle than Mrs. Evans was, for she had confidently ex- 
pected the vacant churchwardenship to be offered to her 
brother; but Miss Lambourne could not resist taking ad- 
vantage of the situation to score off Mrs. Evans. 

“Of course, Mr. Lidderdale,” she said, “I do think 
that you did make a mistake over Albert Prawle, but that 
is no reason why Mrs. Evans should behave so strangely. 
But then Mrs. Evans is a very strange woman. I don’t 
know to this day what I have ever done to offend her. But 
I must have done something, and I’m afraid that I shall never 
be forgiven. Perhaps my offence has been that I have 
seen a little more of the world than poor Mrs, Evans, though 
do not let me put you against her in any way, for I am sure 
that she is in every way a most worthy woman. She had 
an unhappy love affair in her youth—a very long time ago, 
of course. It created rather a scandal in her own village, 
for, of course, as you know, she’s not a Nancepean woman, 
However, it’s not fair to rake up these old stories, especially 
from such a very dim and distant past.” 

Mark was fully aware of the malice behind Miss Lam- 
bourne’s judgment of her rival, but he was by now beginning 
to resent Mrs. Evans’ injured attitude whenever he went to 
the Inn, and he had grown tired of trying to placate her 
by pretending that he did not notice any change in her 
demeanour toward himself. It was really a relief to sit 
in the comfortable parlour of Carwithen and be looked after 
by Miss Lambourne. He liked, too, the tall, silent brother 
who neither condemned nor praised any man. Only some- 
times, when his sister overstepped the bounds of legitimately 
malicious gossip, did he wag his long beard at her in protest 
and mutter several times in rapid succession: 


182 The Heavenly Ladder 


“The women! The women! The women! The women!” 

Miss Lambourne possessed in addition to her qualities 
as a hostess the advantage of being a tower of defence 
against Miss Horton’s indefatigable ambushes. Mrs. Evans 
had always been rather sorry for her, had called her “poor 
soul,” and to give her pleasure as often as not had invited 
her to a meal at which the Vicar was expected. But Miss 
Lambourne never invited Miss Horton to Carwithen, and 
even her persistent deediness in all matters that concerned the 
Vicar was not proof against Miss Lambourne’s frigidity. 

“It’s so droll,’ she said to Mark on one fortunate 
occasion when she did get him alone half-way up Pendhu 
hill. “Do you know I really believe that Miss Lambourne 
doesn’t think that I’m quite respectable. Mrs. Evans tells me 
that she says quite dreadful things about me.” 

“You shouldn’t gossip with Mrs. Evans,” Mark com- 
mented severely. “I’ve never heard your name mentioned 
by Miss Lambourne. You'll be quarrelling with Mrs. 
Evans presently, and then you’ll hear from Mrs. Pellow what 
dreadful things Mrs. Evans says about you.” 

“TI wish you’d come and see Mrs. Evans sometimes. I 
know that she is exceedingly tiresome over Albert Prawle. 
But I’m sure that in her heart she is just as much devoted 
to you as she always was, and I honestly believe that if you 
would have a little patience with her and take a little trouble 
to conciliate her, she would soon forget all about Albert 
Prawle and the mortification of William John’s ceasing to 
be churchwarden.” 

“TI wish you wouldn’t discuss me with Mrs. Evans, Miss 
Horton. I strongly object to being discussed over tea-tables,” 
Mark said crossly. 

“I can assure you, Vicar, that I have never once heard 
Mrs. Evans criticize you in any way. Her manner may be 
unpleasant toward you, but she is always perfectly loyal about 
you in front of other people.” 

Mark would probably soon have written to the Bishop 
and retracted his promise if he had not found a perfect 
consolation for all other disappointments in the children 
of the Sunday-school. During the winter and early spring 


The Echoing Green eros 


his intercourse with them had been limited outside church 
and school to occasional assemblies for playing games at 
the Hanover Inn. Now, with the fair weather and longer 
evenings, he was able to take them for walks and lose 
himself in the paradise of childhood, finding in their mirth 
and innocence the emotion which of all who have ever lived 
on this earth and written verse or prose or music or painted 
pictures only William Blake has been able to express: 


Such, such were the joys 
When we all, girls and boys, 
In our youth time were seen 
On the Echoing Green. 


In this companionship Mark forgot the complications 
of grown-up existence in Nancepean and devoted himself 
to the drama that was played daily in the village school. 
The figure of Miss Vivian (that pleasant mousy little woman 
with whom Mark as vicar of the parish had occasionally in- 
dulged in two or three minutes of polite conversation when 
he happened to meet her on the road) projected itself in a 
spectral immensity upon the minds of the children, and 
Mark, in beholding the reflected image of their own awe, 
perceived the substance of Miss Vivian more truly than in 
conversation with the mousy accidents of her, when, a mere 
profile, she stood leaning over the handle of her bicycle and 
chatting with him politely on the highway. 

“Miss Vivian said this morning if maid Susie wouldn’t 
attend she’d get the cane next time.” 

Thus Arthur very solemnly. 

“Pooh!” Susie exclaimed with a toss of her head. “Who 
cares for Miss Vivian? If she went to fetch her old cane, 
I’d jomp out of the window and run away.” 

But Susie’s heightened colour and a sparkle in her eyes 
of something between apprehension and resentment belied her 
words. 

“How if the window was shut tight and you couldn’t?” 
Donald asked. 

“It wouldn’t be shut tight,” Susie declared. 


184 The Heavenly Ladder 


“Ah, but how if it was, you maid?’ Arthur pressed. 

“Tf it was shut tight,” said Maggie Wilton, entering the 
lists to champion her adored friend, “Susie would belong 
to break the old window.” 

“Miss Vivian would catch a-hold of her before she could,” 
Sophie Tangye and Rosie Wilton retorted in prompt una- 
nimity, each inspired by the chance of putting a younger 
sister in her place. 

The other two little girls perceiving that the argument 
was likely to go against them withdrew hand in hand 
from the main body, the children in which were chattering 
as excitably round Mark as seagulls round a boat, and walked 
enlaced in the grassy ditch that ran beside the road, turning 
now and then to fling over their shoulders glances of con- 
spiratorial disdain at the others. 

Then followed a chanted tale by Arthur Tangye of how 
he and Charlie Woods had had the cane once, to which 
everybody (Mark included) listened with profound interest. 
Mark wondered why a child should never bore one, however 
long the tale it told. It was partly because it never sought 
to give verisimilitude by dragging in too many of the ex- 
ternals of time and place, and partly because on youth’s 
empty parchment the writing is so much clearer than upon 
the palimpsest of age. And the tales told in the youth of the 
world did not bore the reader like most of those told to-day. 

“Once Miss Vivian gave Charlie Woods and I the cane 
because we...” 

Once upon a time. Not on any particular Wednesday or 
Thursday, not in any remembered season of the year, not 
because one sat here or wore that and another sat there 
and looked thus, but merely once upon a time where at- 
mosphere was not required and action moved as swiftly and 
irrationally as in a dream. That conquest of time was one 
of Mark’s sharpest pleasures in the companionship of these 
children. 

“Do ’ee mind once, Mr. Lidderdale, when we played we 
was Indians and boy Eddie Scobell tombled down and made 
his nose bleed and his mother said if he played Indians he 
must be more careful ?” 


The Echoing Green 185 


This had happened only a week ago, but it was already 
a tale of the past touched by enchantment to sleep hence- 
forth, perhaps for ever, in the recess of the fancy and there 
be overgrown with the briers and brambles of experience, or 
perhaps years hence to be roused by an old man and wake 
up as fresh as if indeed it were only a week ago. 

The girls were as eager as the boys to play these de- 
nominational games of Indians, Pirates, Smugglers, Cava- 
liers, Early Christians, and a dozen more categories of politi- 
cal opinion or human activity, because in Mark’s method 
the sides were picked out by the secret ballot of Oranges and 
Lemons. There was no counting out with Eena, Deena, 
Dinah, Do, Cataweena, Winah, Wo, nor any encouragement 
of factions by letting the same set of children always find 
themselves on the same side. It was useless for Arthur 
Tangye to be quite sure that Donald had chosen Oranges 
when Mark was liable to confront him with a choice between 
Raspberries and Pears, or for Rosie Wilton to overhear 
Sophie Tangye whisper Lemons when she herself would be 
asked if she were a Cherry or a Plum, and find in conse- 
quence that she was to be sacrificed at Aulis, while Sophie 
prophesied woe along the walls of Troy. Mark kept severely 
to the distinctions of sex in these games. Girls were women; 
boys were men. Sophie and Rosie accepted the disabilities 
of their lot with equanimity, and indeed with some com- 
placency added, but Susie and Maggie longed for the martial 
opportunities of the boys, and both of them earned one or 
two brown counters for not playing up when the mythical or 
historical conditions that were being reproduced involved 
them sometimes in too dull a feminine inactivity. They had 
their days, of course, as when Susie as Penthesilea, Queen 
of the Amazons, fought with her warrior maids against the 
Greeks and was allowed to slay all who crossed her path, until 
she was herself slain by a rather tremulous Achilles in the 
person of Dick Prawle. 

“Though if it hadn’t been a story I could have knocked 
him down so easy as a cup,” she proclaimed on resuming her 
own identity. 

Mark used to tell his stories at the beginning of a walk 


186 The Heavenly Ladder 


until they reached a suitable spot for the drama to be played, 
which might be anywhere by stream or seashore or cliff’s 
edge that the walk took them. He did not bother much 
about the historical perspective. He saw no reason to burden 
with dates those to whom a year was as long as a century and 
for whom these adventures in the past were nothing more 
than extensions of the present, coloured pictures as it were 
that illuminated the print of daily life. He sometimes won- 
dered in what kind of a confusion of periwigs, armour, knee- 
breeches, and woad his heroes and heroines were clothed in 
the children’s fancy, and he did not think that the few picture- 
books he was able to show them on wet days at the Vicarage 
did much to clear it up. But what did it matter, so long 
as they could take sides? And of that they soon showed 
themselves perfectly capable, so that not the most remote 
encounters of rival factions left them utterly listless about the 
rights and wrongs of a dispute. It was a very short time 
before Arthur was nearly in tears at finding himself doomed 
to portray a hated Yorkist or that Sophie was lamenting that 
her red hair would make so suitable a Queen Elizabeth. 

The countryside for miles round Nancepean was unusually 
rich in romantic settings. Every kind of natural scene apart 
from high mountains was well represented. There was in- 
deed no forest land of any extent, but there were enough 
small woods to impress the small children who dallied among 
their green dells and plucked the primroses in their sun- 
spangled shade. There were the shores of the Rose Pool 
from the waters of which King Arthur Tangye received 
Excalibur in the shape of a yard of lead piping from the 
substantial arm of Winnie Pellow, whose pinafore of white 
samite was sadly spotted by hiding among the bulrushes, 
those same bulrushes among which on another day Elsie 
Tangye, the daughter of Pharaoh, discovered the infant 
Moses, one of her own dolls, lying in a basket. And hard by 
those bulrushes there was that ruined water-mill, and the old 
cherry-trees in sparse bloom, and in a sunny corner half- 
choked by nettles a clump of blood-red tulips. Best of all 
there was the seashore with its caves and pools and rocks and 
level sands. Nobody found a silver dollar or a gold doubloon 


The Echoing Green 187 


or a drowned mariner, and nobody saw a mermaid or an 
octopus; but Arthur Tangye found a coconut husk on the 
very day he was Robinson Crusoe, and once they all came 
upon the carcass of a dead porpoise which, though it smelt 
very heavy, as Donald said, was not on that account less 
entrancing. Mark tried to recapture some of the bird-lore 
his grandfather had taught him, and with the help of one 
or two books he did manage to get back a good deal of it, 
and, what was more, infect the children with the right way 
of regarding birds. He would not allow any collecting of 
eggs because, as he told them, any egg that was worth col- 
lecting was much more worth hatching, and a common egg 
was not worth collecting. He instituted instead the collec- 
tion of observations, for which purpose he kept a notebook 
in which he entered against the name of each child whatever 
unusual birds he had seen and whatever he could find out 
about their habits and their song. The renunciation of some- 
thing they liked doing filled the children with as much 
anxiety as the grown-ups of the neighbourhood not to let 
others enjoy what they refused to allow themselves. The 
teetotalers of Nancepean were not more bitter against the 
drinkers than the Church Sunday-school was against the 
Chapel Sunday-school because the latter continued to rob 
the nests of birds. 

“T saw Charlie Woods this morning,’ Arthur chanted, 
“and he was carrying a copperfinch’s nest, and I said to ’un: 
‘Put back that copperfinch’s nest, will ’ee,’ and he said, ‘I 
won't, so now then,’ and I said to him again, ‘Put it back 
will ’ee,’ and he put out his tongue at me, and I ponched him 
into the hedge, and his eggses was all scat up, and when I 
come into the schoolyard I said, ‘Any boy that takes an egg 
out of a nest will have to fight me and Donald Evans,’ and 
this morning I saw the blue bird that brings the Spring, and 
it flew before me up and down, up and down, for ever such a 
long time.” 

“Why do you call it blue?” Mark asked. “T call it grey,” 
for the bird to which Arthur referred was the wheatear, 
though his grandfather had always claimed it was the © 
fieldfare. 


188 The Heavenly Ladder 


“We belong to call it the blue bird of Spring,” all the 
children cried in chorus. 

One day in a sunny fold of the cliff where the children 
were gathering flowers they came upon an adder basking 
in the sun. 

“Kill ’un, kill ’un,” they screamed. 

“No, no,” Mark interposed. ‘See how lovely it is.’ The 
snake flowed like a stream of jewels across the sunny path, 
and in a trice his jetty lozenges and glistening scales of 
silvery green vanished in the denser herbage. 

“But adders belong to kill you,” one of the children 
protested. 

“Not if you leave them alone,’ Mark said. 

He was regaled with hair-raising legends of being chased 
by adders, at which he scoffed so heartily that his listeners 
were obviously shaken. 

“If you trod on an adder’s tail, it might turn and bite you. 
It probably would. But when you come upon one like that, 
its only idea is to escape as quickly as possible. Think how 
beautiful it looked. Just like a wonderful live necklace of 
precious stones.” 

Two or three days after this Miss Horton informed Mark 
that it was generally believed in the village that the Vicar 
was teaching the children that there was no such person as 
the Devil. 

“T thought I’d warn you,” she explained mysteriously, “so 
that you were careful what you said to the children. They 
get hold of the wrong end, you know, and things get 
exaggerated.” 

She seemed anxious to say more, but Mark did not en- 
courage the afflatus in Miss Horton, and whatever else she 
may have had to communicate was lost. 

May month drew out to June, and June glided into July 
without Mark’s winning any more children from the chapel 
school, but also without seeing any of those he had already 
won relapse. The stamp collections were beginning to grow 
in importance as they grew in size. All had the golden 
stamps of Easter and Whitsunday and Ascension Day, for 
which last festival Mark had insisted that all his children 


The Echoing Green 189 


should have a whole holiday from school and had carried his 
point. In the eyes of the children that was the most glorious 
triumph for the church over the chapel they could imagine, 
and it was not likely that for many a month they would forget 
the commemoration of their Saviour’s flight from earth to 
Heaven. Mark tried his best to secure another, whole 
holiday on Corpus Christi, but unfortunately his inability to 
show that feast in the calendar of the Prayer Book did not 
convince the parents that such an indulgence was necessary. 
However, most of the children acquired the scarlet stamp by 
hearing Mass in the morning before they went to school. 
Incidentally, Mark had obtained from the Bishop a formal 
permission to sing Mass on week-days even if he did not have 
the minimum of communicants. It would have astonished 
a more conventional teacher to see how closely Mark man- 
aged to weave the warp of fairy-tales and birds and flowers 
and butterflies and mythology and history and games of 
adventure into a brilliant and polychromatic web with the 
golden woof of the Catholic faith. Since few of his chil- 
dren were likely to go far away from Nancepean when they 
grew up, it was his object to make every bush and rock, 
every turn of the road and sudden sight of trees, every 
whisper of the wind, every murmur of the sea, every shadow 
of the clouds across the hills, and every note of birdsong 
in the valleys speak to them hereafter with memories of 
holy days and holy deeds. When sorrows should come upon 
them and they should be oppressed with the cares of the 
world, with labour and money-making and love, they might 
wish that they were children again. One of them might 
remember in the years to come that long ago as he wént on 
a fine May morning to church he heard as now a yellow- 
hammer sing his greeting from that crooked hawthorn tree, 
and if he should by chance have drifted away from the 
worship of God the memory of that bird might draw him on 
to see if he could find consolation by returning to the faith of 
his childhood. It might be that none of these children would 
ever drift away. That depended upon himself and his ca- 
pacity to keep his instruction abreast of his pupils’ develop- 
ment. They must not think, when they were launched upon 


190 The Heavenly Ladder 


the sea of adolescence and dreaming of the distant horizons 
to which they were bound, that on that farther shore there 
would be no need of religion. Like Columbus and his com- 
panions they must take the Gospel with them. It must not 
be left behind upon that elfin coast of childhood where toys 
and giants, angels, saints and fairies dwelt. There would 
come a time when that farther shore, so magical at first, 
would seem a monotonous swamp and its hinterland more 
barren than the sea, unless they carried with them a vision 
of a far more remote horizon, the flashing azure waves of 
which broke only in eternity. 

When Arthur should be bent double like Granfa Hockin 
and when Susie should thump along on two sticks like 
old Miss Lassiter, and when these virgin faces now all red 
and white with wild flowers should be furrowed and cross- 
furrowed by the ruthless plough of experience, they might be, 
if they would, children still in the love of God. They might 
be overcome by a fugitive sadness and think, standing at 
twilight by their cottage doors, Such, such were the joys 
when we all, girls and boys, m our youth time were seen on 
the Echoing Green, Nevertheless, they would be filled to 
the brim with joy to remember that soon they should stand 
like children on the Echoing Green of Paradise. It was such 
an Echoing Green that Van Eyck painted, across which 
prophets, martyrs, confessors and virgins, all clad in robes 
of blue and red, came streaming to adore the Lamb of God 
for ever white, for ever young. 


CHALE Rox Ti] 
THE SNAKE 


HE weather became so hot in July that Mark suggested 

the children should celebrate it by all learning to swim. 
His proposal caused tremendous excitement, and for a week 
before the first bathing-party nothing was talked of except 
the various costumes with which the children were providing 
themselves. Mr. Scobell, as one would have expected, bought 
proper bathing-suits for Frank and Eddie, striped affairs 
such as little visitors wore and as grand in their way as the 
sailor suits they sported on Sundays. Indeed, had they been 
supplied with whistles on white cords in case they should be 
in danger of drowning and wanted to blow for help, it would 
not have been remarkable. Donald would probably have 
been given a new equipment, if a girl visitor of two years 
ago had not left behind her a red bathing-dress which his 
mother declared it would be a sin and a shame not to use. 
Donald might have objected to the frills on the shoulders if 
all the rest of the children had appeared in anything remotely 
like bathing-dresses; but compared with theirs his was so 
clearly what it was intended to be that he did not grumble 
at the minor fault of its having been originally intended for a 
girl. The coastguard’s wife cut up an old willow-pattern 
curtain for Rosie and Maggie, but made the dresses so much 
too long and so much too baggy that the two little girls 
looked like a couple of ginger-jars when they stood hugging 
themselves at the water’s edge. The equipment of the 
Tangye children taxed even their mother’s optimism about 
making both ends meet. For two days she discussed with her 
neighbours the purchase of bathing-suits for all of them, 
even as far down the scale as Willie; and no doubt if she 
could have found a Rosemarket tradesman to give her credit 

| 191 


192 The Heavenly Ladder 


she would have indulged herself in a burst of sheerly luxuri- 
ous shopping. In the end she bought a quantity of mauve, 
pale green and pink fondants, which gratified her sense of 
colour, but left her children clamorous and unclothed. At 
last, after threatening that if another word was said about 
the bathing she should forbid them so much as to wash feet, 
the local variant for paddling, during the rest of the summer, 
Mrs. Tangye applied herself seriously to the problem, and 
for a start took Walter’s solitary pair of pyjamas, which had 
been washed ashore from a wreck eighteen months previously, 
and cut them down for Sophie. For Susie and Elsie a pair 
of her husband’s underpants and a vest were cleverly cut 
about and stitched to provide two costumes, while for Arthur, 
having robbed the males of the family for the females, she 
took Sophie’s only chemise and sent him into the water 
looking exactly like a small clown. Lily and Dick Prawle 
appeared in flannelette combinations that resembled rashers 
of streaky bacon, and Winnie Pellow in a truly astonishing 
confection of oilskin. 

The first bathing expedition on a warm and misty Saturday 
morning in a sea of oxidized silver was not quite as suc- 
cessful as Mark had anticipated. These children who had 
spent all their lives on the brink of the Atlantic were hor- 
ribly frightened of entering it when it came to the point. 
Each one urged the other to go in first; but nobody would 
advance beyond his knees. So far up as that their bodies — 
were familiar with the sea; but the moment the scarcely 
heaving water rose an inch higher all the children leapt back 
as if they were being bitten by a dragon. In vain did Mark 
swim splashing to and fro, or stand up to his waist in the 
oily water and shout encouragement. 

“What is the good of all those wonderful bathing-suits 
and bathing-dresses if you aren’t going to do anything more 
than paddle? Come along, Donald, I’m ashamed of you. 
Arthur, for goodness’ sake be a man and set an example.” 

Arthur may have been impelled to a piece of knock-about 
humour by the clown’s costume he was wearing or he may 
have decided to set an example at another’s expense; which- 
ever it was, he at once gave Eddie Scobell a tremendous push 


The Snake 193 


in the back and set him down with a splash on his face in 
the water. Susie almost at the same instant played a similar 
trick on Sophie. The next thing was the spectacle of two 
grotesque wet figures running back as fast as they could 
across the level sands, each bound for the cave in which it 
had undressed and screaming while it ran until the cliffs 
echoed and reechoed with the sound. 

“Come back, come back, you little duffers,’” Mark shouted. 

But Neptune himself could not have compelled them to 
heed him nor Queen Thetis in her nacreous chariot have 
lured them to turn their heads. 

“You'll all get brown counters next week,” Mark threat- 
ened. “Except Arthur and Susie. And they’ll have red 
ones.” 

To earn the red counters of unkindness was a serious 
matter. Arthur and Susie looked at each other in dismay. 

“Tf you'll knock me down,” said Susie, “ll push you 
down. Then we shall both belong to be in the water 
properly.” 

Arthur fell, like Cassius upon the sword of Pindarus, upon 
his sister. Both found it much less terrible than they had 
thought, and with a shriek of excitement pulled down Don- 
ald on top of them. Rosie and Maggie Wilton, taunted by 
Mark with not being true daughters of a sailor, shut their 
eyes and sank into a sitting posture. Elsie Tangye did the 
same, but unfortunately chose a jelly fish for a footstool and 
retreated yelling up the beach. Frank Scobell, who had 
been weeping ever since his brother fled, decided that he was 
wet enough and followed Elsie. Lily and Dick Prawle and 
Winnie Pellow copied their example, though Winnie did 
achieve a kind of a bath by falling into a mess of warm and 
sticky seaweed at the entrance of the girls’ cave. Mark tried 
to give some lessons in swimming to the daring ones; but 
when they were held horizontally in the water they all 
wriggled and giggled so much that he had to abandon the 
attempt. On the way back to join the timid ones and dress, 
all the five daring ones earned purple counters for boasting 
of their bravery. They had nearly reached the caves when 
Susie exclaimed : 


194 The Heavenly Ladder 


“My gosh, where’s boy Willie to?” 

The globular form of boy Willie, three years old and two 
feet six inches from pole to pole, was sighted nearly a 
quarter of a mile farther along the beach. Wrapped in a 
weather-beaten flag, a relic of the coronation of King George 
V, he had in accord with the interior life he led wandered 
away from the noisy bathers to pursue his unplumbed medi- 
tations. When his sisters overtook him and were about to 
shake him for his truancy, he produced from the folds of his 
flag two small crabs and a tiny dab with which he frowningly 
threatened them. Then with grave unhurried steps he fol- 
lowed them back to be dressed, though at the least sign of 
any interference he was ready with his weapons. 

“T believe Willie ‘Il learn to swim before any of you,” 
Mark said. 

However, after this first bathing party, the children gradu- 
ally lost their nervousness, and within a week they were 
enjoying the water with as much zest as the most enthusiastic 
visitor. Then one day Winnie Pellow did not come, and 
when Mark asked her mother why she had not joined the 
others she turned away and gave him one of her brusque and 
inconclusive replies. He supposed that she was offended 
with him about something, and by this time his heart was so 
much engaged with the health and prosperity of his school 
that, meeting Miss Horton soon afterward, he asked her 
what was the matter with Mrs. Pellow, preferring to indulge 
Miss Horton to that extent than by neglect or pride to allow 
a small rift to widen and perhaps destroy the lute which now 
played such entrancing harmonies. 

“T’ve not heard anything,’ Miss Horton said, simmering 
with joy at being asked the question. “But if you like, I’Il 
try and find out, Vicar. Very tactfully, of course. But I 
know you would rely on my being extremely careful. I 
shan’t mention that I’ve seen you lately. Vl...” 

“Oh, please, my dear Miss Horton, don’t make a con- 
spiracy of such a tiny matter. You'll do much more harm 
than good by making inquiries. I thought that in the course 
of the day’s gossip you might have heard that she had a 


The Snake 195 


grievance over something. But I don’t at all want you to 
investigate.” 

Poor Miss Horton would gladly have endured deafness for 
the remainder of her life if she could but have gratified the 
Vicar by having heard something now. 

“What makes you think .. .” she looked behind her fur- 
tively, and perceiving a figure cross the road about three 
hundred yards away, she went on in half a whisper, “what 
makes you think that Mrs. P. is offended with you?” 

“My dear Miss Horton, if you haven’t heard that she 
is offended with me, should I be likely to tell you why I 
thought she might be? Look at the lovely sky! You ought 
to be hard at work painting instead of wasting your time 
in talking to me.” 

Mark had not gone a few paces before Miss Horton 
turned back and came running after him. 

“Vicar, Vicar, I forgot to ask if you’d want me to com- 
municate at Mass to-morrow morning. It is St. Mary Mag- 
dalene’s day.” 

“If you want to communicate, of course you can com- 
municate, Miss Horton. But you know perfectly well it is 
only on Sundays that I have asked you to communicate, so 
that I may keep my promise to the Bishop.” 

“Do you want to have a sung Mass for St. James on 
Saturday morning, as the children won’t be going to school?” 

“Yes, of course, of course.” 

“T’m teaching them a new Sanctus.” 

“Splendid,” said Mark, wishing he could borrow from St. 
James the club with which he was martyred so that he might 
threaten Miss Horton with a similar end. “Now do be care- 
ful, Miss Horton, or you'll lose this lovely sky. I’m sure it 
has changed in the last half an hour while you’ve kept me 
talking here.” 

“You really are a naughty man!” 

She shook a roguish finger at him, and, though it was 
with evident reluctance, she at last allowed him to go on his 
way. 

St. James’s Day. Mark thought of the hot city pavements 
and of the children in Chelsea and Pimlico who raked the 


196 The Heavenly Ladder 


foreshore of the Thames for stones to build their grottoes and 
for green slimy weeds to decorate them. ‘The shrill insist- 
ency of their begging rang in his ears from brassy July days 
in London. 

“Pleasse to rebeber the grotter! A peddy for the grotter!” 

He wondered if any of the tradition of the great medizval 
pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James at Compostella lingered 
in Nancepean. None of the children had said anything about 
building a grotto, so probably it did not. How strange that 
in London of all places that ancient custom should have en- 
dured, but no doubt few pilgrims to that substitute for 
Jerusalem ever set out from Cornwall in the Middle Ages. 
Anyway, Mark decided, a splendid grotto for St. James 
should be the pastime for next Friday after school. He must 
set the children to scour the beach for scallop-shells, so that 
on Saturday after Mass they could wear them when he 
blessed the grotto. There was no reason why it should not 
be built just inside the churchyard. 

So on Friday a grotto was erected with all the most beau- 
tiful stones that could be found. The Nancepean beaches 
were not famous for their shells; but nine pigs, as cowries 
were called locally, were picked up by dint of careful search- 
ing, enough to make a martyr’s crown for the saint. While 
the boys worked at the stones, the girls gathered seaweed; 
and though the rosy plumes and green ribbons did not look 
so lovely as they did when waving in their own pools, still 
by spreading them carefully the effect was very good. 
Scallop-shells for the pilgrims were at a discount. Only 
two were found after a hard search, and one of these was 
broken. However, Mark decided that mussels could be used 
instead, and the children much enjoyed the ceremony of 
exorcizing them, which was done after Evensong when the 
grotto was finished. 

The thrilling prospect of the visit to the grotto in solemn 
procession after Mass made all the children very punctual 
on that Saturday morning; and they sang the new Sanctus 
as triumphantly as if indeed they really were angels and 
archangels and all the company of Heaven, while Arthur, 
whose turn it was, rang the Sanctus bell as if indeed it were 


The Snake 197 


an alarm against the fires of Hell. Opportunities to have a 
sung’ Mass early in the morning were scarce; it was seldom 
that a feast of sufficient solemnity fell upon a Saturday 
morning. No doubt the rarity of them enhanced their beauty. 
To Mark it was like listening in a garden to birds at dawn. 
Not that superficially there was much resemblance between 
the fidgeting of the Nancepean choir and the flutterings and 
warblings of blackbirds, nor between the faces of the 
children, lily-rosed though they were with youth and hap- 
piness, and those dawnstruck flowers in a border so still 
that it seemed but the reflected image of itself, a phantom 
perfumed with the breath of life. As the Mass went on, 
the plump and jovial sun rolled beaming southward and the 
shrill chant of the children ascended like the song of larks 
into the pearly sky of the morning. 


O Lamb of God That takest away the sins of the world, 
grant us Thy peace. 


Feeble and poor and uncertain though the singing was, 
Mark was carried away by the sound, or rather the sound 
flowed between him and the world of the senses and left 
his imagination so free that he was able to apprehend the 
eternal youth of God. In that moment, gazing upon the 
Host, he was granted to behold the Lamb with the eyes of a 
child. 

Little Lamb, who made thee? 
Dost thou know who made thee? 
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee, 
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee: 


He is calléd by thy name, 
For He calls Himself a Lamb. 
He is meek, and He is mid; 
He became a little child. 

I achild, and thou a lamb, 
We are calléd by His name. 


Little Lamb, God bless thee! 
Little Lamb, God bless thee! 


198 The Heavenly Ladder 


Mark was torn back from his rapture of contemplation 
by what seemed a laugh of diabolical mockery floating into 
the church from outside. Yet he knew from the restlessness 
of the children that it was real. Without that assurance he 
might have been tempted to suppose that it was a delusion, 
although not less diabolical because it was confined to himself. 

As soon as Mass was over, the children formed up for 
the procession to the grotto; but when they came to it they 
found that somebody had kicked it over and made of it 
nothing but an untidy heap of stones smeared with seaweed. 

“I know who it were done that,’ shouted Donald, rage 
flowing from his countenance in waves of crimson until it 
was like a mask of white paper. “’Twere Tom Pascoe done 
that, Pll be bound. If I could see ’un, I’d show him some- 
thing he wouldn’t soon forget.” 

“Aw, you'd show me something, would you?” And there 
was Tom Pascoe’s snaky head upraised above the churchyard 
wall. “And what would you show me? How to kiss the 
Pope’s toe?” 

“No, I’d show ’ee how to aim with a stone!” 

Stooping quickly, Donald picked up a jagged one and 
flung it with all his might at the sexton, who only dodged 

it by throwing himself face downward in a bed of nettles. 
_ Mark was wondering if he ought to disengage himself 
from the heavy red cope he was wearing, in case Tom Pascoe 
should be so much infuriated as to attack Donald. But when 
Tom Pascoe was on his feet again, though his face was 
mottled with stings, which made him look more like a snake 
than ever, he contented himself with threats and abuse, and 
Mark was able to get the children back into the church with- 
out coming to blows. 

Miss Horton was hard at work in the tower with a spirit 
lamp, boiling water to make the Vicar tea, so that he need 
not go home for his breakfast and would have no excuse for 
refusing to led her gratify her dearest ambition, which was 
to join the bathing-party. 

“Oh, Vicar,” she exclaimed, “ do you know we’ve made 
the most ludicrous mistake? It isn’t July 25th to-day. It’s 
the 26th, and St. James’s Day was yesterday.” 


The Snake 199 


“Well, that’s your fault, Miss Horton, for interfering. If 
you hadn’t fussed me the other day I shouldn’t have taken 
the date for granted. You must have put me wrong for the 
whole week,” he said indignantly. 

Mark was upset by Tom Pascoe and in no mood to be kind 
to Miss Horton. 

“Never mind about the calendar, Vivar,’”’ Miss Horton 
said when they were all picnicking over an extraordinary 
breakfast on the Castle cliff. “Let us enjoy our bathing- 
3 party.” 

Mark grasped her cunning plot. 

“I’m not going to bathe this morning, Miss Horton. I’ve 
got a bone in my leg.” 

The children all protested loudly. 

“Oh, Mr. Lidderdale, you’ve no such a thing,” Susie 
Tangye exclaimed. 

But Mark was sure that he had, and a very large one, 
too. 

“Never mind, children,” said Miss Horton, for once allow- 
ing her disappointment to get the better of her and make her 
look quite definitely cross. “Never mind. Jl bathe with 
you.” 

The children stared first at her and then at one another. 

“But where’s your bathing-dress to?” they asked in be- 
wilderment. 

“Never mind, you inquisitive little things. You'll see 
when I go into the water.” 

It was now Mark’s turn to stare. Surely ... no, the 
idea was too monstrous! But where was her bathing-dress? 
Yes, Miss Horton’s bohemianism had gone to her head with 
the heat of the dog-days, and, monstrous though the idea was, 
she actually did appear to be about to bathe with nothing on. 
He drew her aside out of earshot of the children. 

“Miss Horton, you’re surely not serious?” he said. 

“About what ?” 

“About bathing without a dress?” 

“You silly man! Oh, really, now isn’t that quite too rich 
for words! Do you think that I am quite mad?” 

But owing to the children’s account of Miss Horton’s wear- 


200 The Heavenly Ladder 


ing her bathing-dress under her ordinary clothes it was 
rumoured in the village either that she had bathed with 
nothing on or else that she had walked down to church in 
her bathing-dress, and, thus attired, played the harmonium. 
Within a day or two it was reported everywhere in the Rhos 
and generally believed that Miss Horton had undressed be- 
hind a bush in the churchyard, and that Tom Pascoe, seeing 
her walk stark naked out of the gate, had been so much 
horrified by her behaviour and the popish practices which had 
led up to it that he had forthwith taken his pickaxe and 
smashed up the Vicar of Nancepean’s new altar. 

The story was absurd enough to be laughed at, and, in- 
deed, Mark did have a good laugh over it with Kennedy 
in the garden of Chypie Vicarage. Yet when he was try- 
ing to laugh over it to himself in his own Vicarage he could 
not do so. There seemed to lie behind it a sinister inten- 
tion, so that presently what had been such a good joke came 
to signify a piece of poisonous obscenity. 

Mark decided that he must make an effort to get one or 
two of his friends to come down and stay with him during 
August. He began to be afraid of the eccentric opinions that 
solitude was begetting in him. From thence to eccentric be- 
haviour would be a short step, and at this rate before an- 
other year was out he should be like the rest of the clergy in 
the Rhos, all of whom, with the exception of Kennedy, were 
figures for the ridicule of the laity and for the patronizing 
compassion of their brethren nearer to the source of diocesan 
life. The story about Miss Horton and himself both bathing 
with nothing on (it had reached this by now) was obviously 
the crude invention of rustic gossip, but behind it—behind 
it—yes, behind it there was some motive, perverted, sicken- 
ing, malevolent. 

Unfortunately, none of Mark’s friends could pay him a 
visit that August ; and although he threw himself more keenly 
than ever into the entertainment and education of his chil- 
dren and was able to keep out of Miss Horton’s way, he was 
all the time oppressed with a sense that there was some hor- 
rible thing impending. Winnie Pellow was never allowed to — 
join the expeditions, although her mother still brought her 


The Snake 201 


to church and let her come to Sunday-school. Moreover, 
Mrs. Wilton took to refusing Rosie and Maggie permission 
to join the walks and games, usually without giving any rea- 
son. Wilton’s chest had become very bad, and having been 
given leave of absence he was now in a London hospital 
under the fancy that the breezes of his native Thames would 
restore him to health. The effect of his departure on Mrs. 
Wilton was disastrous. She had been so much elated by 
inquiries at the cottage after his health when he first went 
away that, when these grew less frequent, her self-importance 
was starved, with the result that she spent more than half 
her time gossiping in the village and always bringing round 
the conversation to the subject of her husband’s illness. 
Meanwhile, her household went to pieces, and the erstwhile 
tidy little white-washed cottage, all shipshape and Bristol 
fashion, looked as sloppy as Mrs. Tangye’s interior. In fact, 
it looked worse, because Mrs. Wilton had more furniture 
with which to make a sloppy effect. There were even 
rumours that she and Mrs. Tangye sometimes spent the 
afternoon discussing their domestic difficulties over a bottle 
of gin. 

“They’ve neither of them bought a single drop at the 
Hanover,” Mrs. Evans declared. “And if they wanted to 
I’ve forbid William John to leave the either of them have it.” 

Mark was much distressed that the home of a fine fellow 
like Wilton should go to pieces in this way and took the 
opportunity of the failure of Rosie and Maggie to attend 
some rendezvous to pay a visit of remonstrance to the grass- 
widow. 

Mrs. Wilton was looking flushed when she opened the 
door, and a mistiness in her blue eyes made him fear that 
the story of the drinking was only too true. It was sad 
to see a young woman of thirty so loose-lipped and blowsy, 
especially one who but a short while ago had been as trim a 
little wife as any man might have the good fortune to find. 
When she led him into the sitting-room, he caught a glimpse 
through an open door of a bed still unmade and of dirty 
petticoats in a huddle on a chair. And it was already six 
o’clock of a hot summer’s afternoon. 


202 The Heavenly Ladder 


“Well, how’s Wilton getting on?” 

“T heard from him only this morning,” said the wife, “and 
he seems the way he writes as if he was very middling. He 
says he spits a lot of blood all the time and never knows 
if he won’t have another of those hemmeridges any time of 
the night or day. As I was saying to Mrs. Tangye only this 
morning, I was saying, ‘Mrs. Tangye, you mark my words, 
he’ll never come out of that sanitarium, not until he comes 
out feet foremost,’ I said to her, ‘and him a man not yet come 
to his thirty-seventh birthday.’”’ Mrs. Wilton mopped her 
moist blue eyes with the end of a dirty check apron. 

“It does seem hard,” she sighed. 

Mark would have felt more sorry for her if the room had 
looked as it did when her husband was at home. The two 
pictures askew on either side of the overmantel gave it a 
kind of grimace and seemed to belie the genuineness of Mrs. 
Wilton’s grief. 

“And if he goes,” she went on, “whatever ‘Il happen to 
his two little fatherless girls I’m sure I don’t know. I’m 
sure sometimes I come all over like at the thought of it and 
hardly know what to do for the best. They say everything 
happens for the best, but it makes you wonder sometimes.” 

“You make a great mistake in anticipating the worst, Mrs. 
Wilton. I’ve no doubt whatever that Wilton will be back 
on duty soon as well as ever he was, and if I were you I 
should have the house ready for him. What happened to 
Rosie and Maggie to-day? This is the third time this week 
they haven’t turned up with the others for bathing.” 

Mrs. Wilton looked embarrassed. 

“TI had to keep them back to help me with the housework,” 
she explained without meeting Mark’s eyes. 

“Nonsense,” he said sharply. “You could manage the 
house perfectly well when they were at school, and so long 
as Wilton was at home it was kept a very great deal neater 
than it is now. It’s not fair to have them pottering around 
the house during their holidays in this fine weather. Where 
are they now?” he asked, looking round for a glimpse of 
the two little girls. 


The Snake 203 


“T had to send them on a message up to Polgarth. The 
milk was forgot somehow to-day.” 

Mark frowned. He had an affection for Joe Dunstan 
himself, but he did not think that the kitchen of Polgarth 
was at all a good place for two little girls. Those three 
brawny sons and their huge mother were apt to be rather 
too free with their tongues. 

“Well, I hope they'll turn up to-morrow afternoon,” he 
said. 

“Ves, I’ll see if it can be managed,” Mrs. Wilton replied ; 
but by the tone of her voice Mark felt sure that she did not 
intend to let them come, and with a cold good-bye he left 
the coastguard’s wife to herself. 

At the Hanover Inn, where Mark called next, he found 
Mrs. Evans grim and sibylline. He had fancied recently 
that she was gradually forgiving him for making Albert 
Prawle churchwarden. It was disappointing to find her _ 
brows knitted and her eyes smouldering. : 

“T’ve just been talking to Mrs. Wilton,” he volunteered, 
unable to keep out of his voice that note of apology with 
which, in spite of himself, he always approached Mrs. Evans 
in one of these moods. Her eyes took on that queer screwed- 
up expression as if she was aiming at some distant foe whom 
she intended to bring down with her tongue. 

“There’s few, I believe, that hasn’t been talking to her 
this last month.” 

“T was asking her why her two little girls hadn’t been 
down bathing with the rest the last two or three days.” 

“And did she tell ’ee?” asked Mrs. Evans, her eyes still 
fixed on that distant quarry. 

“She didn’t give a very satisfactory explanation. I didn’t 
see the children myself. They were up at Polgarth.” 

“Surely!” Mrs. Evans exclaimed mockingly. “’Tis where 
they belong to be all the time these last weeks. A pretty 
place for two little maids! But there, some people don’t 
mind what kind of language their own little maid do hear, 
lev alone for others.” 

Mark thought that if he waited without interrupting he 
might get a clue to the behaviour of Mrs. Wilton. 


204 The Heavenly Ladder 


“Somebody was talking to Dolly Masterman this after- 
noon, and they said Mrs. Tangye’s nose was looking a bit 
crooked.” 

Mark was completely mystified; but he did not dare ask 
the sibyl a direct question lest she should fall into a broody 
silence. 

“Yes,” Mrs. Evans continued, “they said that since some- 
body found a new friend Mrs. Tangye might stand all morn- 
ing by her gate and her twin babies lay screaming indoors, 
but a certain person never so much as stopped to say a word, 
only give her a nod and pass on up the road.” 

Mark could not help himself : 

“T don’t know what you’re talking about. Dear Mrs. 
Evans, do treat me as a friend again and tell me exactly 
what is the matter.” 

“Perhaps nothing is the matter, perhaps everything. Who 
was the first of the maids not to come bathing ?” 

“Winnie Pellow.” 

“There’s your answer, then.” 

“T’m still puzzled. Do you mean that Mrs. Pellow per- 
suaded Mrs. Wilton to keep her children at home?” 

“At home!” Mrs. Evans scoffed. “More at home than 
they ought to be with Gramma Dunstan to Polgarth and those 
great, coarse, filthy-tongued Dunstan boys. But go your 
own ways, Mr. Lidderdale. I’m only a jealous, foolish 
woman. I warned ’ee back along, and you wouldn’t hark 
to a word. Lev Lady Lambourne tell ’ee how to manage 
the church. Lev Albert Prawle and Aunt Penelope tell ’ee! 
Lev Annie Pellow tell ’ee! ’“Iwere best you should go your 
own ways.” 

When that night Mark thought over Mrs. Evans’ words 
he decided that they were not just an outburst of spleen, 
but that she was hinting at something definite. In the end 
he came to the conclusion that his weekly bill at Mrs. 
Pellow’s shop was not large enough to make it worth her 
while to keep in with him and that Drumgold must have 
been getting at her husband. Mark knew that he had been 
none too pleased to see him holding his own. It was just 
one of those bits of petty treachery he should have expected 


The Snake 205 


from the Major. And Mrs. Pellow had not been able to 
resist persuading Mrs. Wilton to support her. The next 
thing would be that neither Winnie nor Rosie and Maggie 
would appear at Sunday-school. Evidently Mrs. Wilton had 
got friendly with Mrs. Pellow up at her mother’s. 

“However, I suppose they’ll wait until the Church Treat 
is over and secede in time for the Band of Hope Tea,” he 
said to himself as he went wearily up to bed. 

Mark had arranged to celebrate the Feast of the Assump- 
tion by hiring a waggonette and after Mass driving the whole 
of his supporters to the other side of the Rhos for a picnic 
on Roscarrack sands. 

Rather to his relief Miss Lambourne did not think that 
she could come, for she was disliked by all the other women, 
and her presence would have shed a gloom on the whole 
entertainment that not even Mrs. Tangye could have with- 
stood, although Mrs. Tangye’s idea of Heaven was driving 
in a crowded waggonette, eating a great many cakes, drinking 
a great deal of ginger-beer, and singing hymns all the way 
home. On this occasion her enjoyment was tempered by 
the responsibility of Lydia and Celia, particularly when 
Mark told her that the treat was for the children, and that 
he was not going to let poor Sophie spend her day sitting on 
the beach, nursing her little sisters and their bottles. 

Mark had made attendance at nine o’clock Mass an indis- 
pensable condition of going, and thts gave him the largest 
native congregation he had had since the Harvest Festival. 
Twenty-five was the exact figure, which included Lydia and 
Celia Tangye. In fact, the only absentees were Albert 
Prawle, who was busy with the harvest, and Toby, who was 
sleeping off the effects of the reward for killing a fox two 
days ago. Even Miss Lambourne was in the church, al- 
though she was not going on the expedition. 

“Just to show off,” Mark overheard Aunt Penelope say 
to Mrs. Tangye, “and make anybody believe she’d ever 
come to church on a Friday morning just to pray. I do 
dearly hate to see anyone show off like that.” 

Unfortunately the morning was grey, and by the time the 
waggonette had reached the most exposed part of the wild 


206 The Heavenly Ladder 


heathery land that made up the greater part of the peninsula 
a light drizzle began to fall. 

“?Tis damping a bit now,” William John said, “but ’twill 
likely turn to fog by twelve o’clock.” 

The bushy Cornish heather was in full bloom, and there 
was nothing to break the immense monochrome of faded 
rose except a few leaden pools surrounded by drifts of be- 
draggled cotton-grass, and here and there a stunted pine. 
Yet on fine days the sun would incarnadine that great ex- 
panse of heather with the hue of life, with more than that, 
with the glow of hidden fires beneath; and once at sunset the 
stems of the pines had gleamed like copper and around 
golden pools the drifts of cotton-grass might have been 
plumy birds of paradise. It was sad that the children should 
see it shrouded thus in rain. 

After four or five miles the waggonette reached Lanbad- 
dern woods, and for a time travelled along a wide road over- 
arched by trees and full-scented with bracken in its tall prime. 
Followed a steep descent down a rocky lane to the left, so 
steep that the driver asked that as many as possible should 
get out and walk. At the bottom of the lane was a small 
gabled house, the walls and even the roof of which were 
covered with an ivy-leaved geranium of that crude and vivid 
pink which to children seems the loveliest colour in the world. 
Just beyond this house the lane rounded the headland that 
marked the southern boundary of Roscarrack sands and came 
to an end in the sands themselves. There was no sign of 
another habitation, for Roscarrack Churchtown lay quite two 
miles away to the north and a mile or more inland. In spite 
of the drizzle the children ran laughing and screaming across 
the sands, which were as flat and hard as a great biscuit, 
while the grown-ups tried to find a suitable place for the 
picnic. The wind was rising in the west and beginning to 
blow in gusts across the towans. The drizzle became a 
drench of heavy rain. It was most discouraging. Mark 
suggested that somebody should go back and inquire at the 
geranium house if they could be given the shelter of a barn. 
William John went off at once, but soon came back with the 


The Snake 207 


news that there was nobody at home and no sign of a barn 
anywhere. 

“°Tis bolted fast, windows and doors,’ he announced. 
“And I don’t believe anyone lives there, because the geranium 
has growed all over the chimneys.” 

“Ts it empty? If it is, we'll break in. I'll take the blame,” 
Mark said. 

“No, ‘tisn’t empty. ’Tis full of furniture, and it wouldn’t 
do to break it. Roscarrack folk is funny. None funnier to 
all the Rose. We belong to call ’em Roscarrack hawks, be- 
cause they do reckon a Roscarrack man ‘Il tear his own 
brother to pieces.” 

The children came running back over the sands with news 
of better birds than the men of Roscarrack. 

“We saw some sea-swallows, Mr. Lidderdale,’” Arthur 
chanted. “And they were so pretty. They flew out to sea 
when we come near them, and then they flew back and 
walked about upon the sand, and when we come near again 
they flew out to sea again, and come back ever so far along 
the beach, and walked about on the sands again.” 

“And we saw some sea-parrots, Mr. Lidderdale,” said 
Susie, who had shown a keener interest in nature than the 
other girls. “And they looked like funny lill old men. Only 
they had yaller feet.” 

“No, they weren’t yaller. They was orange,” said Donald. 

“Isn’t orange yaller?’’ Susie demanded. 

“Yes, if your hair’s so red as maid Sophie’s,” Donald re- 
torted. 

This fixed Susie, and she declined to argue longer. 

It was now raining so hard that Mark suggested that as 
many as possible should sit under the waggonette while he 
took the children and climbed over the garden wall of the 
geranium house to get in the lee of the wind and rain on 
the other side of a belt of evergreens. 

“Winnie, you’d best stay here with me,” Mrs. Pellow said. 

Mark did not pay much attention to this at the moment, 
because Mrs. Pellow always fussed a good deal over her 
daughter. 

“Mother called to us to stay,” Maggie Wilton confided, 


‘ 


208 The Heavenly Ladder 


putting a very wet hand confidently in Mark’s. “But we pre- 
tended we couldn’t hear her, because we wanted to come 
up along with you.” 

Mark smiled down at the little upturned face among the 
drenched roses of which two eyes sparkled with mischief 
like raindrops in the sun. Maggie was as full of vitality and 
mischief as Susie, but she was much less mercurial. It was 
a comfortable, cosy kind of mischievousness, an attitude of 
mind rather than the expression of a physical need. 

Mark’s capacity for telling stories had never been so much 
taxed as on this soaking afternoon. Even tucked back as 
far as possible under the evergreens, the weather found them 
out, and by the time a couple of hours had passed they were 
nearly wet through, because every now and then the wind 
shook down upon them showers of raindrops from the 
leaves, although they were able to shelter from the full force 
of the driving rain. Mark was grateful to that geranium- 
covered house. It was the inspiration of many a tale. Who 
built it? Who lived in it? Why was it empty? When 
would it be full of people? Merely answering these ques- 
tions provided the framework of an epic. It also served as 
an illustration. Like that was the place where the Sleeping 
Beauty slept the years away. Such a house owned the witch © 
who captured Hansel and Gretel. Snow White and Rose 
Red, the Three Bears, and a dozen other picture-book nota- 
bilities had lived in houses the very same as that one. 

At the end of two hours, when Mark was beginning to 
wonder how on earth he should keep the children amused 
any longer, two girls in mackintoshes and sou’-westers came 
running down the lane on the other side of the garden. 

“They do look like visitors,” Arthur opined. 

Mark agreed with him. Visitors in the eyes of the Nance- 
pean children were as distinct from ordinary human beings 
as Zulus or Red Indians. 

At that moment the two visitors caught sight of the refu- 
gees under the evergreens, and stopped to stare at them with 
a gaze of such concentrated interest that the refugees began 
to feel a little embarrassed, and wonder if these two visitors 
were the owners of the house and preparing to eject the 


The Snake 209 


intruders from their garden. After this long stare the 
two visitors conversed together, evidently by their gestures 
much excited. Finally one of them clambered over the hedge 
and came running across the lawn toward the evergreens. 
She was a girl of about fifteen with a long pigtail and a very 
earnest expression, 

“What is it?’ she shouted, when she was halfway. “Is it 
a wreck?” 

The children could not understand why Mark went off 
into a peal of laughter. 

“No, I’m sorry to disappoint you,” he said to the imagina- 
tive young visitor. “It’s nothing like so romantic as that, 
I’m afraid. It’s only a Sunday-school Treat trying to make 
the best of a wet afternoon.” 

“Oh, I’m most awfully sorry!” the girl stammered; and 
as she turned and walked back one felt that even her back 
was blushing. 

“Won't you both come and help us?” Mark called after 
her. 

But she was too much overcome by her mistake, and would 
not turn her head. As soon as she reached her companion, 
they both hurried back up the lane, each no doubt advising 
the other to keep such an idiotic mistake a secret from mock- 
ing relatives and friends. 

Soon after this the rain stopped and the clouds thinned 
sufficiently to give hopes that the sun might come out after 
tea. And this it did, so that when at seven o’clock the wag- 
gonette set off up the lane again into the sun’s eye shining 
low down through a stream of golden vapours, nobody 
seemed to think that the weather had spoilt the day. Dusk 
was stealing across the sea hard behind them when they 
reached Lanbaddern woods, passing through which all sat 
in silence bewitched by the ferny odours and the dripping 
of the trees. The colour was already fast fading from the 
heather when they emerged from the green twilight of the 
woods and faced the five miles of open down, with daylight 
growing dim beyond home and a clouded moon astern. This 
was the right moment to start singing hymns unless the party 
was to fall into a gloom, and Miss Horton, who had been 


210 The Heavenly Ladder 


depressed partly because Mark had not agreed to play any 
of the games she had suggested, and partly because she had 
bumped her forehead in getting under the waggonette for 
shelter, cheered up and quelled the elemental spirits of the 
down by starting Onward, Christian Soldiers. 

It was nearly nine o’clock when the waggonette came 
rumbling down the hill into Nancepean and the Treat was 
over. 

Mark had the company of the Prawles for half his walk 
to the Vicarage; but he would not let them come all the 
way back and get his supper, because he had had enough for 
one day of watching people preparing meals. He felt sorry 
afterwards, when he turned in through the gate of the drive, 
that he had not let them come back. The house looked 
gaunt and forbidding in the cloudy moonlight, and he began 
to dread the silence he should find within. The lank hydran- 
geas stared wanly at him on either side, and the scent of 
magnolia hung heavy and sickly on the sodden air. It seemed 
the wrong kind of scent for such a grim house, like rouge 
and powder on an old woman. 

When he turned the corner along the drive, he saw to 
his amazement that the front door was standing wide open. 
It set his heart beating; for the house on this side was in 
the shadow, and the open door gaped like a black wound. 
He stood hesitating to enter. He had been the only person 
to leave the house that morning. The Prawles had not been 
near it. And he remembered clearly that he had locked the 
door behind him. Why, then, did it stand open? Mark 
pulled himself together and by an effort of will crossed the 
threshold and struck a match. He wished more than ever 
that he had let the Prawles come back with him, for he 
should not be able to sleep to-night until he had examined 
all those empty rooms. And the prospect was not a pleasant 
one. The door of his study was standing ajar, but of course 
he might have left that open without remembering. He | 
stepped in just as the match burnt itself out, and had a second 
shock when he looked at the grey windows and saw that the 
upper sash of one of them was pushed right down. It must 
be a burglary, he thought, and felt relieved when he had 


The Snake PATA 


given a name to his fears. They must have been gloriously 
sold. Or had some fanatic entered the house to murder 
him? His heart quickened again. Then he laughed. A 
murderer would not have left the door open. No, it must 
be a thief. Some tramp. Though he could not recall ever 
seeing a tramp anywhere in the Rhos. By now he had the 
lamp alight and, looking up, thought he must have gone mad, 
for an obscene monosyllable was chalked in huge red letters 
right across one wall. Sick at the insult he turned away 
from it to close the window and draw the curtains. There 
were bits of glass on the window seat, and when he pulled up 
the sash he found that one of the panes had been broken to 
reach the fastener. Now looking again at the defiled wall 
he saw a letter lying on the top of the bookcase that reached 
halfway up. 

Mark knew that this letter would probably contain an 
elaboration of the scrawled obscenity on the wall, and for a 
moment he was tempted to tear it up unread and avoid the 
pain. He told himself that this would be cowardly, and 
undid the dirty envelope addressed to Mister Liderdale: 


Yore sins as found you uot weve wotched you long 
enuf at your Games with mocint boys and maids how dar 
you get up in the pullpet and praych of Jeses and such things 
wen you spend yore days to korup tnocints how don’t you 
clere out off here and take yore prosstitut with you we dont 
wont such as you in uor inocint vilidge yore behavyir to; 
church as made all wish you never come to Nanspeen but 
that is not the wursst yes you cal it lurning them to swimm 
but wat 1s it nothing but... 


Mark crumpled the letter up. The rest of it was too filthy 
to read. Not that he was any longer capable of being hurt 
by the word or the deed of any human being; but he had 
always had a physical horror of filth, and fastidiousness 
somehow remained when everything else had fallen from 
him. His mind went back to that ridiculous girl who had 
asked if they were a wreck. Well illustrated by one of those 
comic artists who knew just how to make a parson look a 


2i2 The Heavenly Ladder 


perfect fool, it would do for Punch. A wreck! Ah, God, 
yes, and what a wreck! 

The first shock of the letter had petrified Mark’s soul; but 
presently with such pangs as rend a resuscitated body the 
implications of the letter ran through him like fire. He 
understood now why Mrs. Pellow had kept Winnie at home, 
and why Mrs. Wilton under the influence of talk at Polgarth 
had done the same with Rosie and Maggie. Only this af- 
ternoon Mrs. Pellow had called after her daughter to stay 
with her when the others were going with him to get shelter 
under the trees. No doubt they were all wondering how 
Mrs. Tangye and Mrs. Prawle could let their children . . 
and then with one lancinating thrust came the thought that 
perhaps the children themselves were aware of what was 
being whispered. He sank down into a chair and pressed his 
hands against his seared eyeballs, trying to gain relief from 
his mental agony by the pain he inflicted on himself, trying 
to drive away the dreadful visions of his mind’s eye by evok- 
ing the fantastic fireworks and microcosmic convulsions 
that are painted on the retina as the blood of the eyelids flow 
between it and the light. The void was marbled with veins 
of gold among which danced purple stars and crosses. He 
pressed more hardly. Scarlet planets evolved from sea- 
green nebule, performed countless polychromatic changes, 
and in a rain of lightning dissolved to make way for new 
ones. But the visions of his mind were more potent than 
those induced displays; when he opened his eyes again, the 
writing was still upon the wall. He hurried into the kitchen 
to fetch water to expunge it; and while he was at work, he 
felt that somebody was outside the window trying to peep 
through the crack in the curtains and see what he was doing. 
He leaped across the room and flung the curtains back. Yes, 
there like the white belly of a slug on the pane he saw a nose 
pressed against the window, and beyond it easily recognizable 
the face of Toby Prawle. 

Mark darted out and dragged him inside by the scruff. 
He did not seem at all surprised by Mark’s sudden action. 
No doubt, in the pursuit of his hobby, he had often been 
handled like this by angry victims of his passion for peeping. 


The Snake 213 


“T only looked in to see where thay was all to,” he 
explained. 

“Did you put a letter here for me?” Mark demanded. 

Toby looked so genuinely blank that Mark felt pretty sure 
that he knew nothing about the business, and that he really 
had come up to see if the others had returned. The chink 
of light showing must have tempted his passion. And, after 
all, what did it matter who had written the letter? It was 
the expression of a story that was generally believed in 
Nancepean. 

“Why do you peep at night, Toby?” Mark went on. 

“T’ve always belonged,” Toby replied. “But ’tis only by 
night. Some do peep by day. But I don’t belong to peep by 
day. Tom Pascoe, he’s the boy for daylight peeping. I’ve 
seen ’un many a time watching ’ee on the shore, and once or 
twice I been minded to tell ’ee of it, but it passed from my 
mind, I’ve known him lay for an hour or more. Ess, 
sure. Lay on his belly and crape through the grass so as he 
could watch ’ee from the edge of the cliff. And once I come 
upon him from behind, and he turned his head and said: 
“Hist, hist, Toby,’ he said. ‘I’m watching out for that 
down there.’ I knawed well for what he was watching ’ee. 
‘Ess,’ I said, ‘how don’t ’ee lev the man do as he’s a mind, 
poor soul?’ I said, ‘for if it isn’t him, ’twill be another.’ ” 

Toby said this with such a complete absence of cynicism, 
and so evidently accepting his own point of view as one any- 
body must take, that Mark could not be angry with him. 

“God forgive you, Toby, you’ve added the last touch,’’ he 
sighed. 

He had been thinking to himself that he would go im- 
mediately to the Pascoes’ cottage and ram the letter down 
Tom’s throat, even if in doing so he should choke the life 
out of the brute; but when Toby took the possible truth 
of the horrible story so much as a matter of course he felt 
that any violence would only create a public scandal and serve 
no purpose. There would always be people who believed it, 
whatever he said or did. And if he resigned the living? 
No, he could not do that. It was unimaginable that he 
should go away from Nancepean, leaving behind him nothing 





214 The Heavenly Ladder 


except a legend of iniquity. It would not matter for him- 
self, but the children might come to suppose, as they grew up, 
that they had been sinned against, and that must not happen. 
No, no, that must not happen. 

After a sleepless night Mark made up his mind to travel 
up to Bodmin and:put the case before the Bishop; but when 
he walked into Rosemarket he read on the placards of the 
Western Morning News that the Bishop of Bodmin was dead. 


CAP TR ROA 
THE DAY OF JUDGMENT 


ALFWAY back to Nancepean Mark overtook Miss 

Lambourne. He made up his mind to pass her with the 
excuse that he was in a hurry to get home; but she gave him 
such a pleasant smile and appeared such a civilized product 
beside the rest of the parishioners that he suited his pace to 
hers and walked along beside her. She at any rate could 
hardly be involved in the conspiracy to blacken his name; 
probably, indeed, she had heard nothing about it, so little 
did she mix with the rest of the village. Or perhaps she 
had heard a vague rumour and had wished to show her dis- 
approval of such idle gossip when yesterday she had declined 
to accompany the Sunday-school Treat. It was not to be 
wondered at that she dissociated herself as much as pos- 
sible from the others. There was no reason to suppose that 
she fancied herself superior to them, or if she did, might 
she not claim that she really was superior to such a barbarous 
crowd? ‘The rest of them supposed that she gave herself 
airs, because she spoke correctly and dressed herself with a 
certain amount of neatness and taste. To be sure she was 
apt to let her contempt for them be rather too apparent, but 
that was as much their fault as hers because she must always 
be unpleasantly aware of the way they poked fun at her, 
alluded to her as Lady Lambourne, and for all one knew 
might have accused her of behaviour as monstrous as his 
own. No class had such a cynical disbelief in human decency 
as countryfolk. Or was it that the inevitable publicity of 
their lives did not allow them to screen their follies and 
their vices in the way that those who dwelt in cities could? 
Was human nature really as brutish as it was made to appear 
in the country? Were the accusations levelled against inno- 

215 


216 The Heavenly Ladder 


cent behaviour due to the fact that the accusers themselves 
had no conception of innocence? Mark remembered his 
experience of the confessional at St. Cyprian’s, and sighed. 

“You seem sad, Mr. Lidderdale,” said Miss Lambourne. 
“T’m afraid that your trip to Roscarrack was spoilt by the 
weather.” 

“The weather was the best part of it,” Mark answered 
recklessly. 

Miss Lambourne raised her eyebrows. 

“Dear me, that sounds very bitter! I suppose I oughtn’t 
to ask questions, but . . . was there any trouble with Miss 
Horton?” 

Mark looked round at her in surprise. 

“None whatever. But why should there be?’ 

“Oh, no reason at all, no reason at all,” she replied, purs- 
ing up her lips and staring in front of her at the placid and 
silvery expanse of sea which floated two green miles away 
beyond Nancepean. The self-conscious vacancy of her coun- 
tenance invited one to suppose that it was a mask to hide a 
secret, and Mark accepted the invitation. 

“My dear Miss Lambourne, you wouldn’t make a remark 
like that unless you had some reason.” 

“Will you promise not to take offence if I tell you some- 
thing?’ she asked. 

“T don’t think I’m any longer capable of taking offence 
at anything,’ Mark said hopelessly. 

She looked up at him from under her eyebrows with an 
expression of quizzical compassion. 

“You’ve snubbed me so very decidedly once or twice when 
I’ve ventured to criticize some of our neighbours that I’m 
rather afraid to say anything. However, I suppose I must 
run the risk of incurring your displeasure again. Well, Mr. 
Lidderdale, quite a lot of people in Nancepean are firmly 
convinced that you are very much in love with Miss Horton. 
One or two say that they hear from Miss Horton herself 
that you are engaged. The others are less charitable, I’m 
afraid, in their inventions. You blame me, I know, for 
not associating more with the life of the village, but really 
I find it impossible to put up with this sort of idle chatter 


The Day of Judgment eal 


and gossip. Rather than waste my breath in arguing with 
such people I prefer to keep myself to myself.” 

Miss Lambourne paused. 

“Are you waiting for me to contradict this ridiculous ru- 
mour?” Mark inquired angrily. 

“Now please, Mr. Lidderdale, don’t be vexed with me. 
You insisted on my telling you. I’ve not suggested that I 
had paid the least attention to...” she hesitated for a 
perceptible space ... “to either story.” 

“But why should the currency of this debased small talk 
have led you to ask if there was any trouble with Miss Hor- 
ton yesterday?” 

“Well, Mr. Lidderdale, I was afraid that some of your 
lady helpers might have made themselves unpleasant to poor 
Miss Horton, who, I’m sure, is quite a pleasant person, 
though I understand that she is afraid to visit me on account 
of my tongue. That is a little hard, is it not, Mr. Lidderdale? 
My tongue! If the good lady could only hear the tongues 
of some of those with whom she is on such intimate terms, 
I believe she might think twice about going to tea with any- 
body in the parish. It wasn’t I who said that she was a 
barmaid in Plymouth who ran away with a naval officer to 
Penzance, where he deserted her. It wasn’t I who said that 
she had to leave her own home because she was going to have 
a baby and that when she pretends to be selling her pictures 
she is really visiting this child which is put out to nurse 
with a labourer’s wife in Roseford. It wasn’t I who said 
she was in the habit of coming to the Vicarage after the 
Prawles had gone home and staying there till the early hours 
of the morning. If these things have been said, you have to 
thank some of your apparently loyal friends.” 

“What Nancepean says about Miss Horton,” Mark burst 
out, “is exactly what every village anywhere in the world 
says about any single woman who is fool enough to suppose 
that she can live by herself and work in the country. Every 
unmarried priest in England is credited with a Miss Horton. 
Gossip of that kind does not affect me in the least—I take 
it for granted. But things have been said about me, Miss 


218 The Heavenly Ladder 


Lambourne, in this parish which are making me wonder 
if I can continue to be Vicar here.” 

Miss Lambourne shook her head gravely. 

“T know, I know,” she agreed. “Once or twice I’ve 
thought of warning you against their dreadful tongues, but 
I was always afraid that you would think I wanted to prej- 
udice you against Mrs. Pellow and Mrs. Wilton and Mrs. 
Evans.” 

“Mrs. Evans?” Mark interrupted sharply. Since last night 
he had been conscious of the question at the back of his 
mind, like the phantom of a veiled fear, shapeless and hor- 
rible. It was no longer possible to avoid giving it a form. 
“What has Mrs. Evans been saying?” 

“Oh, I mustn’t give you the idea that Mrs. Evans has said 
anything at all terrible. I believe that she did say she wasn’t 
sure if she ought to let her little boy . . . such a dear little 
boy, isn’t he? I’m really very fond of him and wish that 
his mother would let him come and see me sometimes.” 

“Ought to let Donald do what?” Mark asked in an agony. 

“Ought to let him go down to church so much and take 
so many walks.” 

The expanse of placid and silvery sea had been growing 
narrower as they walked down hill to Nancepean, and now 
it lay along the horizon like the blade of a knife. | 

“But I don’t think she probably meant anything more than 
that she thought so much running about was bad for his 
leg,” Miss Lambourne resumed, after she and Mark had 
walked a hundred yards or more in silence. 

“Ts Job pleased with the harvest prospects at Carwithen ?” 
Mark inquired. 

“Oh, I think so, though farmers are never very pleased 
about anything, are they?” she replied. 

And thence onward for the rest of the road down into 
Nancepean they talked of such things as the harvest and the 
amount of cream that the visitors consumed. 

The following afternoon in Sunday-school Mark pro- 
claimed the Day of Judgment, and the money-boxes were 
opened. 

“TI was thinking all the time that you’d belong to have the 


The Day of Judgment 219 


Day of Jodgment to-day,” Arthur said. “Only I didn’t say 
nothing about what I were thinking because I didn’t know 
what counter you’d give me if I were thinking wrong. Oh, 
my gosh, look at all the white ones I’ve got! I didn’t know 
I’d have so many as all that.” 

And for that Mark counted Arthur’s white counters as 
one more than they really were. 

“Well, dear children, I think you’ve all been wonderfully 
good on the whole,” Mark said. “I’m particularly pleased 
to see so few yellow tokens of jealousy and so few red ones 
of unkindness. One or two of you have got more brown 
ones for dullness than I hoped, and there are rather more 
purple ones for bragging than I care to see. But all have 
plenty of blue ones for praying hard and plenty of green 
ones for playing hard. Nobody did anything that I heard of 
or saw to earn a black token. Each one of you has gained a 
medal. Here they are. Look, it’s Our Blessed Lady and the 
Holy Child. You can wear them round your necks with a 
bit of string, and, when you are tempted to do wrong, press 
the medal against your bodies and pray to the Holy Child to 
help you fight against the temptation. Donald Evans, Arthur 
Tangye and Maggie Wilton, whose boxes have least of the 
bad tokens and most of the good, will each have a little silver 
crucifix. The prizes for the stamp collections will be 
awarded on the first Sunday in Advent at the end of No- 
vember, when I give out the albums for another year. 

“And now, dear children, I’ve got to tell you that I think 
Wwe must give up our expeditions together, because I find 
that people are saying that you only come to church and to 
Sunday-school for the sake of our games and walks. I want 
to show people that you can be good little Catholics for no 
other reason than because you want to worship our dear 
Lord and want to learn about His life on earth and want to 
try each of you in his or her own little way to imitate Him. 
I don’t suppose that any of you jhave enjoyed the games and 
the walks so much as I have enjoyed them. You know how 
on our walks we have admired the humble little daisies as 
much as any of the flowers we have seen, and how we have 
loved best of all the little brown wrens that hop in and out 


220 The Heavenly Ladder 


of the holes in the stone walls, and how much we have 
learned of our Father’s goodness from the daisy and the 
wren. Well, I’ve learnt more from you little things about 
our Father’s goodness than I have ever learnt from grand 
grown-up people. And now, Miss Horton, I think we'll 
have hymn number five hundred and seventy-three, please.” 


All things bright and beautiful, 
All creatures great and small, 

All things wise and wonderful, 
The Lord God made them all. 


Each little ower that opens, 
Each little bird that sings, 
He made their glowing colours, 
He made their tiny wings. 


The rich man in his castle, 
The poor man at his gate, 
God made them, high or lowly, 
And order d their estate. 


The purple-headed mountain, 
The river running by, 

The sunset and the morning, 
That brightens up the sky;— 


The cold wind in the winter, 
The pleasant summer sun, 
The ripe fruits in the garden,— 
He made them every one; 


The tall trees in the greenwood, 
The meadows where we play, 
The rushes by the water, 
We gather every day;— 


He gave us eyes to see them, 
And lips that we might tell, 
How great is God Almighty, 
Who has made all things well. Amen. 


The Day of Judgment 2eT 


While the class sang this hymn, Mark knelt and prayed 
for strength and consolation. 

“And now, dear little children, remember that hymn and 
go on doing for yourselves what you have been doing with 
me. Every Sunday afternoon I shall want to know how yqu 
have spent the days of the past week, about the birds you 
have seen, and the flowers you have found, and the adven- 
tures you have had, and the games you have played.” 

Mark saw that Donald’s eyebrows were knitted in that 
grave frown which always expressed his deepest emotions, 
saw Arthur’s eyes opening wider and wider in painful be- 
wilderment, and two teardrops go tumbling down the cheeks 
of Maggie Wilton. He could bear no more, and after giving 
them his blessing he told them that the class was over. 

“And don’t wait for me outside,” he said, “for I have a 
lot of things to talk over with Miss Horton.” 

Miss Horton had comprehended that the Vicar was upset 
about something, but she had not ventured to hope that at 
last he would turn to her for sympathy. If he had asked 
her to poultice a gathered finger she could not have felt 
happier. Indeed, her sympathy was so much like an ex- 
tremely hot linseed poultice waiting in a bowl to be applied 
that Mark could not stand the prospect and fled from her 
without even explaining where he was hurt. 

He passed hurriedly along through the village aware of 
small heads looking wistfully at him over gates and of two 
depressed little figures watching him where the road swept 
round toward Church Cove by Polgarth gate. 

As Mark went by Roscorla he saw Isaac Jago carrying a 
milk-pail across the town-place. He wished him good after- 
noon, and for answer the dark and sullen farmer spat in the 


dung-heap, 


CHAPTER XV 
THE NEW BISHOP 


ARK decided that the mistake he had made, nay, more 

than a mistake, the sin he had committed in surrender- 

ing against his conviction to the claim of the late Bishop of 

Bodmin, was responsible for the state of affairs in Nance- 

pean not yet a year after his arrival. The death of Bishop 

Meade released him from a promise. In future he should 

go his own way, the way of Almighty God and His Church, 
without the least regard for episcopal interference. 

When he read that a congé d’elire had been sent to the 
Dean and Chapter of Bodmin in favour of Canon George 
Grindlay Tomlinson, he rejoiced, because Canon Tomlinson 
represented much that Mark greatly disliked in ecclesiastical 
thought and behaviour. Without further consideration he 
not only restored all the ceremonies and ritual that he had 
agreed to give up in deference to the late Bishop, but he 
added a number of observances and devotions he had not 
hitherto attempted. The visitors began to grumble louder 
than ever, and Major Drumgold wrote to express his pain 
at seeing Mark losing all the ground he had gained by the 
exercise of a little moderation. It was with the greatest 
reluctance and only from a keen sense of his duty as people’s 
warden that he had written to the new Bishop to complain 
of the grave excesses in Nancepean Church and to beg him 
either to send the Archdeacon or, better still, to make a 
personal visitation. 

On a postcard Mark replied: 


Delighted to hear it. 


Soon after this Mark had a letter from the Bishop, with 
which he enclosed a copy of Drumgold’s complaint, and 
222 


The New Bishop 223 


asked for an explanation of it. To this Mark returned what 
his Lordship considered was an extremely unsatisfactory 
reply, and he was invited to interview the Bishop personally 
at Lis Escop. However, when Mark arrived in Bodmin, 
he found that the Bishop had received a sudden summons 
to a conference in London, so that he had his interview with 
Archdeacon Doublebois instead, at the end of which the 
Archdeacon told Mark that in the whole of his life he could 
not recall any interview that had caused him so much pain. 

“You were evidently too good a boy at school ever to be 
flogged, Mr. Archdeacon,” Mark said. 

The dignitary grew very red at this, partly because he 
resented the gross flippancy of the observation, as he told 
Mark, and partly because, as he did not tell Mark, he 
strongly objected to what was clearly an attempt to make a 
stupid pun upon his name. In fact, he completely lost his 
temper and accused Mark of adopting a cynical, almost, one 
might say, a cruelly cynical, attitude of contempt for lawful 
authority. 

“T had hesitated to believe what was commonly reported 
of you in the diocese, Mr. Lidderdale ; but the way you have 
received my admonition this afternoon has changed my 
mind.” 

“Believe what?” said Mark quickly, who supposed for a 
moment that he was referring to the cesspool of village 
gossip. 

“Why, it was said to me the other day by one who had 
every opportunity of knowing what was in the mind of 
Bishop Meade that your self-willed conduct at Nancepean 
had without any doubt hastened his end.” 

“That’s the kind of cowardly lie that would circulate in a 
cathedral close,” Mark retorted. “And if the man who said 
it really was in the Bishop’s confidence, it was a deliberate 
lie, because he would have known that I obeyed Bishop 
Meade in everything that he asked me to do or not to do.” 

“That is not the impression I have received this after- 
noon,’ the Archdeacon said. “The impression I have re- 
ceived this afternoon is of a contumacy that I have no hesi- 
tation in stigmatizing as unparalleled within my experience.” 


224 The Heavenly Ladder 


“Against my convictions, Mr. Archdeacon, I gave a 
‘promise to Bishop Meade which I faithfully kept. I was 
persuaded to obey, because the personality of a learned and 
holy man was too strong for me. I have always regretted 
my promise and considered that I did wrong in giving it. lI 
hold that his successor or his representative has no right to 
trade upon that. I am acting more frankly by refusing 
to give up devotions I consider essential to the spiritual 
health of the Anglican Church than by making promises I 
should intend to circumvent.” 

“In other words you defy the lawful authority of your 
Bishop,” the Archdeacon insisted. 

“TI have not noticed during our conversation, Mr. Arch- 
deacon, that you have been so scrupulous over the motives 
and behaviour you have attributed to me as to make it worth 
my while or your while to argue precisely what I am doing. 
Anyway, I refuse to give up Benediction. I refuse to make 
the saying of Mass depend on the number of communicants. 
I refuse to give up the private devotions at Mass to which 
I believe a priest is entitled. I refuse to take down the image 
of the Blessed Virgin or the Stations of the Cross or the 
Crucifix over the pulpit. I refuse to give up the ceremonial 
use of incense. And I refuse to give up praying for the 
dead.” 

“T shall advise the Bishop to institute proceedings against 
you in the Bishop’s court,” the Archdeacon threatened. 

“In that case, Mr. Archdeacon, I had better reserve my 
defence,” said Mark. 

Mark really did hope that the Bishop would institute pro- 
ceedings against him, for while he had no desire to remain 
a day longer in Nancepean he was loth to give his enemies 
an opportunity of saying that they had frightened him into 
resignation. A sentence of deprivation by the Bishop would 
be just what was required to turn his defeat into the equiva- 
lent of a victory for the Catholic party, because every 
sentence of deprivation for an ecclesiastical offence provided 
another martyr to the truth of the cause. But no doubt the 
new Bishop of Bodmin, who as Canon Tomlinson had been 
famous for being an astute manipulator of difficult situa-— 


The New Bishop 225 


tions, realized this. At any rate, there were no signs of 
episcopal action at present. 

Meanwhile, Mark diverged from his parishioners more 
sharply every day. He had not been personally unpopular 
with any except the Nonconformist farmers, who resented 
his apparent inability to grasp their importance not merely 
in this world, but in the next as well. Yet ever since that 
accursed anonymous letter he could no longer feel at ease 
with the people. He was always asking himself what lay 
behind the most ordinary remark. He became shy and self- 
conscious, and, like so many shy and self-conscious people, 
took refuge in what was supposed to be a sarcastic habit of 
speech, but which was really being careful that there was 
always a way out of his lightest remark. He made a habit 
of asking Miss Horton to tea at the Vicarage in order to 
show the village that he was not going to be deterred from 
doing so by any scandalous tongues, and when Miss Horton 
came he treated her with abominable discourtesy to prevent 
her supposing that he enjoyed her company. He avoided any 
kind of explanation with Mrs. Evans, and if once she had 
been sibylline with him he was now twice as sibylline with 
her. One day, when they were capping each other’s un- 
pleasant allusions, Donald, who was present, burst into tears 
and rushed from the room. 

“You'll break that child’s heart, Mr. Lidderdale,” his 
mother cried in a sudden outburst of passionate bitterness. 

For a moment Mark was shaken; but he remembered that 
Mrs. Evans had doubted if she should be able to let Donald 
go down to church so much, and he rejected the opportunity 
of a reconciliation. 

“T don’t think that I shall be the only one to blame,” he 
said coldly. 

After that the Evanses came no more to their own church, 
but drove every Sunday morning up to Chypie. This 
worried Kennedy, who wrote to Mark and asked him if he 
should not like him to speak to the Evanses about their 
not attending their parish church. 

“My dear Kennedy,’ Mark wrote back. “Please do not 
say anything. The point is that they are hearing Mass 


226 The Heavenly Ladder 


every Sunday. That is the only thing that matters. Where 
they go seems to me quite immaterial. Please take an inter- 
est in the boy, who ts worth tt.” 

Not only did the Evanses give up attending their parish 
church, but Donald came no more to Sunday-school. A 
week later none of the Tangyes came; and when Mark asked 
Arthur the reason, the boy only blushed and turned away 
his head. At the same time, Mrs. Wilton and her two little 
girls left Nancepean, the coastguard having obtained a trans- 
fer. In spite of the mischief wrought by Mrs. Pellow, Win- 
nie, oddly enough, still attended. So did the Scobells, and, 
of course, the two little Prawles. But the class was no 
longer alive, with the departure of the other children. 

At the end of October, just when everybody in Nance- 
pean was beginning to ask if a second year was going to pass 
without a big catch of fish, there was a heva. Mark, hear- 
ing that it was an exceptionally large school, walked down 
to Nancepean Cove to watch the seine hauled in. The beach 
was crowded with excited people, and by good luck it was 
a calm day at the tail of St. Luke’s summer. The leaping 
pilchards did not flash with such fierce colours as they would 
have flashed beneath an August sun; but still the quivering 
iridescent myriads were fantastically beautiful as to shouts 
of “Pull, boys! Corks and twine, corks and twine! Pull, 
and again pull! Corks and twine! Corks and twine! 
Pull!” the net was laboriously hauled in. 

“Can’t I give a hand?’ Mark asked John Joseph Dun- 
stan, who, covered with scales like a knight in chain armour, 
had pulled ashore to fetch something that was required for 
one of the two big boats. 

The eldest son of Polgarth looked at Mark blankly for a 
moment. Then he muttered surlily: 

“No, no, there’s nothing you can do,” with which he 
passed on. 

Mark turned away from that reaping of the sea and went 
back to the Vicarage. He told himself that the reason for 
John Joseph Dunstan’s surliness was his having refused to 
hold a harvest festival this year; but whatever the reason 
his isolation from the life of the parish had been rammed 


The New Bishop 227 


home to him hard enough. Just over a year ago Joe Dun- 
stan, the father, had been the first to give him a real wel- 
come, and now John Joseph, the son, was the first to make 
it really clear that he was not wanted in Nancepean. 

In view of John Joseph Dunstan’s attitude a week or two 
before, Mark was surprised when Aunt Penelope came in 
one morning to say that he wanted to speak to the Vicar. 

“T’ve come to give ’ee notice of a wedding,” John Joseph 
said. ‘Bessie Hoskin and me be going to get married after 
the banns.” 

“In church?” Mark asked, raising his eyebrows. 

“Sure. Where else would we be married to?” 

“But why should you want to be married in the church? 
You never come near the church from one year’s end to 
the other,” Mark said. “Why don’t you get married in the 
chapel ?” 

“We do always belong to get married to church,” John 
Joseph replied. 

“Well, I flatly refuse to marry you in the church,” Mark 
retorted. “If the chapel is good enough to worship God in, 
it’s good enough to be married in.” 

John Joseph swung his cap round once or twice, then put 
it on, and slouched out of the room. 

Later on that day Mark walked down into the village to 
interview the father of the prospective bride. 

“Look here, Hockin, I’m astonished at you. How is it 
you’re willing to allow your daughter to be married in a 
church? I thought you were a stouter chapel man than 
that.” 

“Our chapel isn’t licensed for marriages,” the blacksmith 
said. 

“Well, I don’t feel inclined to let the church be used as a 
registrar’s office, for that’s all such a wedding as this would 
make it,” Mark said. 

“I do know well that most of ’em do spake against ’ee, 
Mr. Lidderdale, but I’ve not spoke against ’ee. But don’t 
think to put shame on the chapel by what you’re doing. The 
Lord will look after His own.” 

“I’m not trying to put shame on the chapel. I don’t see 


228 The Heavenly Ladder 


that by asking your daughter Bessie to get married else- 
where I’m putting shame on the chapel, or her, or you, or 
anybody.” 

“You do know well the maid must marry or be shamed,” 
the blacksmith said with an almost tragic dignity. “But the 
Lord will look after His own, and His House will not be 
cast down.” 

“T knew nothing about this, Ernest,” Mark said gently. 
“T’m sorry, for you’ve been a good and careful father. You 
didn’t deserve that. Well, if she’s in trouble, Pll marry 
them and say no more. But you must try to understand my 
point of view. I regard marriage as a sacrament, and I 
did not see why I should be asked to administer one sacra- 
ment to people who are so utterly neglectful of the others.” 

Mark might have done better to be firm in his refusal, for 
he was only credited with trying to be unpleasant and then 
knuckling under to the threats of the stalwart blacksmith. 

In November the two Scobell boys started their annual 
winter colds, so that their mother kept them at home as 
much as possible, and before Christmas the Church Sunday- 
school was a thing of the past, although Mark tried to teach 
Dick and Lily Prawle every Sunday afternoon at the Vic- 
arage. But it was a dreary little class. 

In February Mark, after writing depressed letters to all 
his friends, was paid a visit by Cyril Nash, who brought 
down as a present from the Vicar of St. Cyprian’s an image 
of St. Tugdual, which he had had specially carved. 

“Mortemer wanted to send it to you in time for your 
patronal festival,’ Nash explained. “But the artist was 
temperamental, and it has only just arrived.” 

The saint was installed in the presence of Miss Horton, 
Miss Lambourne, and the Prawle family, who between them 
now made up the whole of Mark’s congregation. 

The next morning when Mark and his guest went down 
to the church for Mass they found that the saint had van- 
ished. 

“How very odd!” said Nash. “Surely some angel can’t 
have brought him another white horse.” | 


The New Bishop 229 


“T expect some of my friendly parishioners have thrown 
him into the sea, more probably,” said Mark. 

“Oh, surely they wouldn’t do that?” 

After Mass they climbed up the Castle cliff, and there, 
smashed to pieces on the rocks of Dollar Cove, was St. 
Tugdual, the patron saint of Nancepean. 

“What blighters, Mark!’ Cyril Nash exclaimed. “I say, 
can’t we go and break up something in the chapel—the read- 
ing-desk or whatever their favorite idol is? But seriously, 
this sort of thing is rather impossible. You’d have more 
consideration from heathen medicine-men.” 

“T expect that I’m as much to blame as they are,” Mark 
said. “Latterly I’ve done a good deal to irritate them and 
nothing at all to pacify them.” 

He tried to make himself tell his friend all about the 
wretched business which had corrupted everything; but 
when it came to the point of putting it into words he could 
not, and the ulcer ate deeper all the time. 

The day before the end of his visit Cyril Nash suggested 
to Mark that the chancel would be vastly improved by taking 
away the two front rows of pews. Mark agreed, but said 
that their removal would be a sacrilege in the eyes of the 
parish. 

“Let them have a lesson,” Nash urged. “Perhaps it will 
teach them to think twice next time before they commit 
sacrilege. Come along, we'll take an axe and hack the 
beastly things up. We needn’t throw them over the cliff, 
although they deserve it. You’ve plenty of room for rubbish 
in the tower.” 

“But do you realize that these pews are pitch-pine’” Mark 
asked. “Do you realize that the shittim-wood used for the 
Ark was not more rare and much less precious?” 

However, Cyril Nash had his way, and the pews were 
uprooted and cast into the tower. 

The morning after, Mark drove into Rosemarket to see 
his guest off, and, walking back, found the village in a state 
of commotion. So deeply had the feelings of the people 
been outraged that they groaned and booed at the Vicar 


230 The Heavenly Ladder 


on his way past. In the afternoon he had a visit from Major 
Drumgold. 

“TI say, Lidderdale, you know, this is deuced serious. 
You’ve stirred up a regular hornet’s nest. You know what 
I mean? You’ve thoroughly roused them. What on earth 
induced you to commit such an act of Vandalism? Espe- 
cially when it was your own grandfather who was responsible 
for reseating the church. The whole parish was proud of 
those pews. Well, they were pitch-pine.” 

“If the parishioners were so proud of them, it’s a pity they 
didn’t use them a bit more,” Mark said. 

“Ah, well, that’s another story, I’m afraid. But look 
here, what are you going to do about it? I’ve had to call 
an indignation meeting for this evening, and if the resolution 
is passed it means that the Bishop will have to do something, 
But I thought I’d just give you a chance to put them back. 
I might quiet ’em down if you’d do that.” 

“T certainly shan’t put them back,” Mark declared. “TI 
didn’t call an indignation meeting to protest when somebody 
threw the image of the patron saint over the cliff.” 

“Now don’t think that I approved of that, Lidderdale. 
I didn’t. You know what I mean? I strongly disapproved. 
And I said as much to the chaps who did it.” 

“Oh, you know who did it?” Mark interrupted. “You’re 
a fine churchwarden!” 

“Now look here, Lidderdale,” said the Major, tugging ner- 
vously at his red moustache, “don’t let’s introduce a personal 
element. I mean to say, don’t let’s get personal. Let’s 
keep the discussion in the—er—you know what I mean, the 
—er—oh, bother, what is the word? Abstract! Let’s keep 
it in the abstract. What I want you to understand is that I 
disapproved. Never mind who did it. That’s neither here 
nor there. I disapproved strongly, and I went so far as to 
warn them that they were inviting you to retaliate. Dm 
bound to say I never thought you’d retaliate on the pews. I 
did think that you’d have had a greater respect for the 
sacred surroundings of the church. I can tell you it’s been 
a deuced shock to me. When George Pellow brought me 


The New Bishop 231 


the news I was just going to shave, and, by Jove, I had to 
put it off till after breakfast. And I went bang through the 
South African war without ever doing that. Topsy knew 
something must have upset me pretty badly. In fact she 
said, ‘What has upset you?’ And when I told her you’d 
hacked down four pews and thrown them out into the tower, 
she said, ‘The man must be mad!’ That’s the way my wife 
looked at it. But then she’s always ready to find an excuse 
for everybody.” 

A week or two after the meeting Mark was summoned to 
Bodmin again. This time the Bishop was at home. 

Dr. Tomlinson’s ecclesiastical career had had much in 
common with that of the Vicar of Bray. He was more 
subtle, however, and his conversion to Liberalism, which had 
gained him his latest preferment, had been beautifully grad- 
ual. Moreover, many people thought that it really must be 
sincere, because otherwise a snob of such calibre would 
surely have preferred to remain a Conservative. Perhaps 
Dr. Tomlinson was sincere. Perhaps he really did believe 
in Liberalism. He was not a great scholar, but he had 
written a critical study of Tennyson and a number of 
pamphlets on social reform which masked the exiguousness 
of his academic distinctions. The most successful part of 
his career at Trinity College, Cambridge, had been his close 
friendship with two contemporaries who had since attained 
the highest political honours, and to one or other of whom 
he seldom failed to refer in the course of a conversation. 
Purely as a snob Dr. Tomlinson had achieved a considerable 
reputation. Legends of incredible obsequiousness had gath- 
ered round his name, most of which were no doubt 
apocryphal and the mere stock-in-trade of all proverbial 
snobs. Still, much must be granted to a man who could 
achieve proverbial fame in anything. His devotion to 
Tennyson showed that his snobbishness was the expression 
of a genuinely romantic and at the same time thoroughly 
respectable temperament. He rolled off a title with the 
kind of relish that one might suppose that Milton rolled off 
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry. No doubt his con- 
secration to the see of Bodmin gave him something of the 


232 The Heavenly Ladder 


pleasure that a captain of industry got from the barony 
conferred upon him. At the same time he might have pre- 
ferred a less parvenu see. He would enjoy signing himself 
George Bodmin, but he would certainly have enjoyed much 
more signing himself George Cantab:, and he must have 
regretted that he had not been given the see of Cambridge, 
which had fallen vacant at the same time as Bodmin. How- 
ever, he may have consoled himself by wondering if one 
day he might not sign himself George Cantuar :, which would 
more than compensate him for the loss of George Cantab:. 
Not that Tennyson and titles and a timely conversion to the 
principles of Liberalism were all that Dr. Tomlinson pos- 
sessed. He was a practical administrator, an admirable 
speaker, and a thoroughly capable and shrewd man of af- 
fairs. The stereotyped phrases that one involuntarily used 
to describe his abilities indicated at once their extent and 
their limitations. 

Mark, to whom Kennedy had related the most fantastic 
tales of Dr. Tomlinson’s snobbery when he himself was an 
undergraduate at Trinity and the Bishop was Warden of 
Cranmer Hall, the theological hostel, hoped to be amused 
by him. But the Bishop, a large, unwieldy man with an ugly 
smile, worked by raising his upper lip and exposing his big 
teeth, did not contribute anything to his mirth. There was 
not much time for talking before lunch, to which Mark was 
invited. Nor did lunch do anything to improve his cheer- 
fulness. Mrs. Tomlinson, a shrivelled little woman, com- 
plained of the bitter climate all the time. 

“T thought when we came here that we were going to see 
the most wonderful gardens, but really, Mr. Lidderdale, 
our little garden at Towcester was better than anything I 
have seen here. I wish that the Deanery had been vacant 
earlier, for I am sure the Bishop would have much preferred 
to be Dean of Towcester. The Deanery garden is really 
lovely; but’, 160’ 

“My dear,” said the Bishop, very politely but very firmly, 
“T don’t think that Mr. Lidderdale has said if he will drink 
wine or—er—water.” 

“Wine, please,’ Mark announced recklessly, for he had 


The New Bishop 233 


@ presentiment that the parlourmaid would hold a decanter 
up to the light before she poured out a glass of wine that 
would have the same relation to ordinary wine as the water 
in a tooth-glass has to ordinary water. And she did. 

After lunch in the study (a much altered room since the 
time of Dr. Meade) the Bishop came to the point at once. 

“For we must not forget, Mr. Lidderdale, that you have 
a train to catch. Now I understand from Archdeacon 
Doublebois that at your last visit, when I unfortunately 
missed you, I understand that you said quite definitely that 
you had no intention of obeying me. Do you persist in that 
attitude ?” 

“If your Lordship asks me to do or not to do more than 
my conscience will let me,” Mark replied. 

“T have had continual letters complaining of your services, 
and I gather from the latest communication sent me by one 
of the churchwardens that you have been tinkering with the 
fabric of the church.” 

Mark explained the circumstances in which he had re- 
moved the four pews. 

“Yes, yes, yes, Mr. Lidderdale,” said the Bishop, “but 
two blacks do not make a white. In the first place I should 
say that it was highly injudicious of you to erect such an 
image. However, inasmuch as that image no longer exists, 
so far as I can gather from you, I shall not waste time 
remonstrating with you about it. We will also put aside for 
the moment all talk of pews. I understand that last Easter 
you held a series of utterly unauthorized services, and your 
parishioners are afraid that you have every intention of re- 
peating them this year. I must request—indeed, I must 
exact a promise from you—that in future you will not go 
outside the Book of Common Prayer for your services, 
unless, of course, such services have received the approval of 
your Bishop. I understand that you have been saying 
prayers in Latin. That, of course, must stop at once. I 
hear, too, of venerating, for I do not seriously suppose that, 
as my petitioners assert, you have actually been worshipping 
an image of St. Mary. You will readily appreciate the 
danger of such outward forms of respect when I tell you 


234 The Heavenly Ladder 


that your parishioners believe that you are worshipping this 
image, which, of course, as you will readily understand, 
would upset them a very great deal. Other complaints refer 
to extraordinary services on various occasions such as the 
commemoration of All Souls and the celebration of the so- 
called Assumption of St. Mary, and what I can only suppose 
was the observation of Corpus Christi so called. My peti- 
tioners merely accuse you of walking about the churchyard 
under a red umbrella, but my travels on the Continent, 
coupled with the fact that this eccentric performance ap- 
parently took place at the end of May or beginning of June, 
lead me to suppose an observation of Corpus Christi. Now, 
I understand that you had given a promise to my prede- 
cessor, Bishop Meade, not to use the Sacrament in what I 
should not hesitate to call a theatrical way, Bae for which 
he no doubt used a gentler term.” 

“T promised Bishop Meade not to say bes sveck 

Dr. Tomlinson shuddered with disgust. 

“Please, Mr. Lidderdale, I cannot countenance that word 
in Lis Escop. Oh, I know it is a good old English word, 
but like many good old English words it has acquired as- 
sociations which make it extremely undesirable to use it 
nowadays. Very well, you promised Bishop Meade not 
to say Holy Communion .. .” 

“T promised not to celebrate on Sundays unless there were 
three communicants. That promise I kept so long as he 
was alive. I also kept my promise not to have Benediction 
of the Blessed Sacrament. I did not promise anything about 
Corpus Christi. Since the death of Bishop Meade I have 
not considered myself bound by any promise.” 

“But, my dear Mr. Lidderdale, when you were instituted 
to the benefice of Nancepean you took an oath of canonical 
obedience to the Bishop of Bodmin and his successors. Am 
I not his successor ?” 

Dr. Tomlinson opened his arms wide in a sweeping inter- 
rogative gesture. 

“TI gave the promise to Bishop Meade against my own 
convictions,” Mark argued. 


99 


The New Bishop 235 


“But the oath of canonical obedience?’ Dr. Tomlinson 
repeated with another sweeping gesture. 

And then began that trite argument about the meaning of 
canonical obedience, which lasted until it was time for Mark 
to catch his train back to the west. 

“Mr. Lidderdale,” Dr. Tomlinson said before he left, “I 
am not going to take action against you for anything that 
you have done before I was consecrated Bishop of this 
diocese. I shall write to you and ask you to promise me 
that none of the things to which I take exception shall be 
done in your church. If I do not receive a satisfactory 
answer to this letter, I shall take disciplinary action.” 

Soon after Mark got back he received a letter from the 
Bishop setting out in detail the various services and cere- 
monies to which he objected and asking for a reply as soon 
as possible. To this Mark paid no attention. At last in 
May he received the following letter: 


Lis Escop, 
Bodmin. 
May 5, 1914. 
Dear Mr. Lidderdale, 

So far from receiving any satisfactory reply to my letter 
of February 23, you have not even had the courtesy to send 
me any reply at all. I can only conclude with the greatest 
reluctance that you are unwilling to make the promise for 
which I, writing as your Bishop, asked. 

That promise demanded of you, firstly, that none of the 
things mentioned both at your last interview and in my 
letter of February 23, being admittedly illegal, shall take 
place in your church; and, secondly, that you will perform 
the services prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer and 
no others unless you have sought and obtained my special 
sanction. I must insist that such a promise is an expression 
of your willingness to carry out the Oath of Canonical 
obedience to the Bishop of Bodmin and his successors which 
you vowed with your hand upon the Bible. I fear that you 
have interpreted that Oath in a sense which the words of it 
cannot possibly bear—nay, I almost hope that you have, for 


236 The Heavenly Ladder 


in no other way can I acquit you of the sin of deliberately 
violating that Oath. 

I am informed on the weightest legal authority that I 
should be well advised to transmit your case immediately by 
Letters of Request to the Court of Arches. But I am un- 
willing to take that course. I prefer to place you under 
discipline without having recourse to the Court. 

At your Institution there was committed to you the cure 
and government of the souls of the parishioners of Nance- 
pean and the licence and power to celebrate Divine offices in 
the parish church of Nancepean. I am not satisfied that you 
have served or are serving your cure and mine either well or 
loyally ; but I have no power to remove that cure from your 
charge except by public prosecution in Court. 

I write now to inform you that until you are willing to 
make and to carry out that promise to which [ have alluded, 
I place you under this discipline: 

First, I refuse, as your Bishop, to visit your Church. 

Secondly, I give instruction that you are not to be sum- 
moned to any Synods, or Conferences, in your Rural Dean- 
ery, or Archdeaconry, or Diocese. 

Thirdly, I confine you, in your priestly office, to your own 
parish; and I give notice to all whom it may concern that 
you have not my Permission or Authority to preach or to 
perform your Priestly Office in any way whatever in any 
other place or Parish in this Diocese. 

This painful course I adopt in the profound and earnest 
hope that you may soon make it possible for me to relax this 
discipline, which I shall do willingly and gratefully. 

I shall publish officially and in the Public Press my letter 
to you of February 23 together with this letter, in order that 
any Clergy may know that you are not allowed to preach 
in any of their churches, and that the Church in Cornwall 
may be witnesses of the discipline under which I place you, 
and, I most earnestly and humbly pray, witnesses before 
long of your restoration to a better mind. 

Believe me to be, 
Sincerely your Father in God, 
George Bodmin. 


The New Bishop 237 


This was followed up by the following letter issued to the 
clergy of the diocese: 


To INCUMBENTS Lis Escop 
2 4 


Bodmin. 
May iI, 1914. 

The Bishop desires to bring to the knowledge of the 
Incumbents of the Diocese the following letters which have 
been issued by him to the Rev. Mark Lidderdale, Vicar of 
Nancepean ; and thus to make known to them the discipline 
under which he has placed Mr. Lidderdale. 

The Bishop feels sure that his Clergy will readily under- 
stand why he has decided to act thus, and, in the first instance 
at any rate, to endeavour to deal with the irregularities tabu- 
lated in the accompanying letter by the exercise of paternal 
discipline rather than appeal to the. Ecclesiastical Courts. 
It is enough to remind them that, apart from the prospect 
of costly litigation—not rendered less formidable by the 
knowledge that every device of legal ingenuity and pressure 
of party agitation, which the resources of rich and powerful 
organizations on one side or the other can command, may be 
used—the suit might probably, as the Law now stands, have 
to be carried by Appeal to the Privy Council, the authority 
of which in Ecclesiastical matters is largely repudiated. 
Moreover, he would ask them to remember that the Judg- 
ment of the Court might have to be enforced by imprison- 
ment, a penalty so unsuitable and so offensive to public 
opinion that its infliction might turn a flagrant offender into 
a quasi martyr. 

He devoutly trusts that it may not be necessary to enforce 
the discipline by a method which could only have these de- 
plorable results. His Clergy have already given him the 
right to have such confidence in their loyalty that he cannot 
bring himself to fear that a single one of them will hesitate 
to accept the just and reasonable admonition of his Father in 
God as having a greater claim upon his conscience than the 
decision of a Court of Law. 


This was the state of affairs in the parish of Nancepean 
when war broke out. 


CHAPTER XVI 
WAR 


HEN at half-past seven of the fourth of August Mark 

was sitting in his empty church and saying Morning 
Prayer, the sun streaming through the East window upon 
the pages of the book, his thoughts were far from Nance- 
pean. The externals of warlike preparation had not been 
visible down here, but the quickened fibres of his whole 
being responded to the emotion of the country, and it was 
the tranquillity of the fine and warm morning that seemed 
unreal rather than the fever of the time. It was not until 
he came to the First Lesson that he was conscious of what 
he was saying or reading. It was the third chapter of 
Ecclesiastes: 


To everything there is a season, it began, and a time to 
every purpose under the heaven: 

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to piant, and 
a time to pluck up that which is planted; 

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down; 
and a time to build up; 


The words sounded like the passing-bell of an epoch. 


A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a 
tume of peace. 


Mark was suddenly filled with an immense restlessness. 
He felt that he was swimming round and round in a crystal 
globe, his companions goggle-eyed desquamating goldfish, 
and regarding the world outside it all distorted even as he 
himself was regarded by the world. 

After Mass he started to walk over to Chypie; but half- 
way up the towans he changed his mind and turned aside 

238 


War 239 


in the direction of Angarrack. The question about which he 
wanted to consult Kennedy could wait. Drumgold would 
know more about the situation than Kennedy, who might 
laugh at the idea of war, which would be exasperating. 

“Hullo, Lidderdale!” the Major exclaimed, for Mark had 
never been near his house in a year. “What on earth’s the 
matter to bring you up here at this time of the morning? 
Nothing serious at the church, eh?” 

“No, no, Major. I came up to talk about the war.” 

“By gad, things are looking pretty grave, eh? Come in. 
We're just going to have breakfast.” 

“T’d like a cup of coffee. I didn’t go back to the Vicarage 
after Mass.” 

“After Mass! What a fellow you are,” the Major 
chuckled. “I believe you take a delight in ragging me. You 
know what I mean, you enjoy it. Eh? But come along. I 
expect we shall find Topsy in her dressing-gown. But you 
won’t mind? Well, she got into the habit when we were so 
long without girls. Sweetheart!” he bawled, “here’s Mr. 
Lidderdale come to have breakfast with us.” 

“Oh, good gracious!’ Mrs. Drumgold panted, as her hus- 
band and the unexpected visitor entered the dining-room. 

“You don’t think the Germans will climb down before the 
ultimatum expires?” Mark asked eagerly. 

“Oh, no, no, I think that war’s inevitable. You know 
what I mean? It had tocome. It’s been coming for years. 
Roberts was right. Pity we’ve got this damned govern- 
ment.” 

Mark was quite unconscious of the Major’s fatuity, and 
could have wrung his hands for the assurance that war was 
certain. ; 

“T thought at first we weren’t going to stick to France. 
My heart’s been thumping with a mixture of rage and ap- 
prehension and hope for the last three days,” Mark said. 

“Ah, well, but even these confounded Radicals must know 
it’s now or never. We shan’t get a second chance. If we 
had let the Germans trample on France, we should have been 
the next. Well, I reckon the Kaiser’s moustaches aren’t 
sticking up quite so stiff as usual to-day,” the Major said, 


240 The Heavenly Ladder 


zestfully tugging at his own, with the picture of the Kaiser 
in his mind. 

“T wonder what Italy will do?” Mark said. 

“In my humble opinion Italy won’t do anything. You 
know what they say there, manafia.” 

In times of peace Mark would have taken a good deal of 
pleasure in correcting the Major’s notions of the Italian 
language, but now his expert views of military life and, 
what was more, his actual experience of war in South Africa 
was something to be grateful for. He spent a couple of 
hours after breakfast poring over maps with his host, who 
was so much impressed by this new aspect of Mark that he 
nearly gave up his game of golf to spend the rest of the 
morning in responding to deferential questions and laying 
down the laws of strategy to so much appreciative attention. 
But he roused himself from dalliance with flattery. 

“T shan’t get in my morning round if I’m not careful.” 

Mark and he parted with real goodwill on both sides, each 
thinking to himself that the other was a finer and more 
sensible fellow than he had ever supposed. 

From Angarrack Mark went on to Chypie Vicarage. 

“Hullo!” Kennedy cried jovially. “Here’s the goat that 
beareth upon him all our iniquities. Well, how do you feel 
since you’ve been confined to your own parish by George 
Bodmin ?” 

“Oh, that,” said Mark, dismissing it with a gesture. 
“Look here, I want to talk to you about this war. Drum- 
gold says they’re sure to call for volunteers. What about 
my going?” 

“As a C.F., you mean?” 

“No, no,” Mark said impatiently, “not as a Chaplain. I 
don’t want to make a mess of that job. I mean enlist.” 

“You’re mad, my dear fellow,” Kennedy exclaimed. “We 
aren’t at war yet; and for my part I shouldn’t be a bit 
surprised to hear that the Germans have climbed down. But 
if we do go to war it won’t last a month. It can’t. Not 
under modern conditions. I was reading in the paper that 
there actually isn’t enough lead in the world to last more than 
a month.” 


War 241 


“Never mind about the lead. I want your advice about 
enlisting,’ Mark said. 

“Look here, come and sit under the strawberry-tree and 
get cool. Have some iced lemonade or something.” 

But Mark was not going to be put off his plan by chaff. 

“Y’m in dead earnest, Kennedy. I’m in a cage here. I’m 
not going to give them the pleasure by resigning the living 
of saying they’ve beaten me. , But if I could get away and 
enlist. . . . Look here, Kennedy, did you notice the Lesson 
this morning? Didn’t it strike you as amazingly appropriate 
to the moment?” 

“But surely you’re not such a bibliolater as all that? And 
personally I should say that until England is invaded’’— 
the plump priest broke off to convulse himself with laughter 
—“until then’—and here he became serious—“your duty 
lies here.” 

“Saying Mass to empty pews and preaching to the Prawle 
household!” Mark exclaimed bitterly. 

“No, saying Mass for the thousands who’ll be fighting. 
The preaching you can miss out. I know you’ve been 
through a rough time, but if there’s anything in what you 
and I believe this is the moment to prove it. You can’t 
accuse me of undue solemnity, but I’m solemn about this. 
There’d be no justification for the way you’ve behaved, if all 
you’ve fought for can be pitched away to indulge yourself 
in an adventure. The Bishop would say, and he’d have a 
right to say that you merely indulged yourself in disobe- 
dience out of pique. It would be infinitely better for you to 
do what the Bishop demands than take this ridiculous way 
out. Besides, it isn’t a priest’s place to fight. It really 
isn’t.” 

“You may be sure that plenty of French priests will fight,” 
Mark said. 

“By force majeure, not as volunteers. I do implore you 
not to do anything foolish, Lidderdale. You have too much 
imagination. The prospect of war has stirred your blood. 
But the average man will only see in such behaviour the 
freak of one who is quite irresponsible. All you’ve stood 
out for will come in for the same sneer. You needn’t think 


242 The Heavenly Ladder 


that we’ve deserted you. I’ve been in correspondence with 
priests all over the diocese, and there is a strong feeling 
that we ought to ignore the Bishop’s Inhibition. Give us 
time. You'll be offered pulpits all over Cornwall within a 
short time. Can you honestly say to yourself that you want 
to go and enlist for any other reason than because you find 
apparent inactivity in the midst of so much excitement 
almost intolerable ?” 

“Well, I think Ill walk into Rosemarket and find out if 
there’s any news.” 

“You'll only work yourself up into a high fever,” Ken- 
nedy warned him. ‘Why not walk over to Polamonter, 
and have a talk with Goodchild? You'll get the average 
point of view from him.” 

Mark did not think that this was bad advice. A really 
long walk would relieve his pent-up feelings. But the air 
blowing free across the down sang in his ears of war, the 
flaming rose of the heather coloured his vision with war, 
and beyond all the blue sweep of sea round three sides of 
the peninsula said war, war. He did not feel that on such 
a day he could stand the stuffy vicarage of Polamonter and 
Goodchild’s discontented family; so turning round he took 
the wide road back to Rosemarket, where all day he went 
backward and forward between the post-office and the rail- 
way station. It was half-past one in the morning before he 
reached the Vicarage. He lay awake all night, thinking that 
England was at war, and asking Divine Guidance for his 
course. 

The first lesson at Mattins was the fifth chapter of 
Ecclesiastes: 


For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; 
and a fool’s voice 1s known by multitude of words. 

When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay tt; 
for He hath no pleasure 1n fools: 
' Better ts it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou 
shouldest vow and not pay. 


War 243 


“But in a war like this—the justest war that was ever 
made?” Mark asked himself. “Should I not be paying to 
God what I have vowed?” 


If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent pre- 
venting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at 
the matter: for He that ts higher than the highest regardeth. 


“Sortes sacrae!’”’ he exclaimed aloud. This was behaving 
like a fortune-teller, not a priest. The answer could only 
be found in his own heart. Yet all through Mass his mind 
was demanding of God the answer. 

After Mass he made himself a cup of tea, and set out to 
Rosemarket to get the latest news of events. There he ran 
into Miss Horton, who greeted him in a state of considerable 
excitement. 

“Tt’ll be all right, Vicar, it’ll be all right.” 

“What, the Belgian resistance?” 

“No, no, my getting a job. I once did a course of nurs- 
ing, and my very old friend General Bultimeer has most 
kindly written to say that if I write to Lady Popham he is 
perfectly sure she will know of something. But he strongly 
advises me to come up to London. He says he’s such a 
believer in being on the spot. Perhaps you'd like to read his 
letter? He thinks that everything’s quite all right. Where 
is his letter? Oh dear, I must have left it on the counter 
of the post-office when I was sending those telegrams. I’m 
going to-morrow morning. Are you walking back to Nance- 
pean? We might walk back together if you'll wait one mo- 
ment while I run to the post-office and look for General 
Bultimeer’s letter. Of course I shall hope to get out to the 
front. That’s my idea. I don’t want to stay in Eng- 
i euata Raa 

Mark agreed to wait while Miss Horton rescued her 
letter. If she was leaving Nancepean to-morrow it would be 
too churlish not to give her his company. 

“Shall we walk back by the Rose Pool road?” she sug- 
gested. “I should like to have a last look at that lovely 
country. Who knows if I shall ever see it again?” 


244 The Heavenly Ladder 


Even if she were leaving Nancepean to-morrow, Mark 
thought, he saw no reason why she should be encouraged 
in this heroic sentimentality. 

“Presumably the Great Western Railway will continue to 
run trains,” he said coldly. 

“Yes, but one never knows what may happen to one in 
times of war,’ Miss Horton sighed. 

“One never knows what may happen at any time,’ Mark 
pointed out. 

“You don’t feel, Vicar, that I’m deserting you?” 

“Of course not.” 

“Because you’ve only to say the word, and I’m ready to 
stay.” 

“Why, I wouldn’t hear of it, Miss Horton. I think it 
would be both wrong and foolish of you not to leave to- 
morrow morning. Your friend the General is right. You 
should be in London,” 

Mark was tempted to break his rule of never allowing 
the conversation between them to become personal. It was 
all he could do to refrain from trying on Miss Horton the 
effect of the announcement that he intended to join the army. 
And suddenly, his imagination projecting itself in a series 
of pictures of the future, he saw himself lying wounded on 
a battlefield, losing consciousness, and coming back to it in 
a quiet airy room with Miss Horton bending over him and 
asking him how he felt. He shuddered. 

“What’s the matter? Is your foot hurting you?’ she 
asked in the present. 

“There’s nothing the matter with my foot.” 

“You made a face as if you were in pain,” she told him. 

“Come, come, Miss Horton, you mustn’t let your new 
profession take charge of you entirely.” 

“Ah no, I shall always be a painter before anything.” 

Miss Horton made this declaration just as a curve of the 
steep shady road, down which they had been stumbling 
through a tunnel of wild cherry-trees, revealed the southerly 
creek of the Rose Pool, the waters of which beheld thus 
seemed to be kept in place by a comb of green rushes through 


War 245 


which a few tresses escaped and threaded with silver the 
level grass in which the road came to an end. 

“Why, what’s that?’ Mark cried, pointing beyond the 
rushes to a shape that moved slowly through the water. 
“Surely it can’t be a woman bathing?” 

“Tt is a woman,’ Miss Horton declared. “But she isn’t 
bathing. She’s dressed.” 

Mark ran ahead at top speed, shouting to the woman to go 
no farther, because the bottom shelved abruptly, and she 
would be out of her depth before she knew it. But the 
woman began to move forward faster, so fast that she 
splashed the glassy surface of the water and ruffled all the 
bank. Mark did not stay shouting at her, but waded in and 
seized her arm just as she stepped forward into the sub- 
aqueous chasm of the Pool. The shock frightened her suffi- 
ciently to let Mark draw her back into the shallows, and 
thence lead her ashore. 

It was Maud Airey, the servant at Pentine, a pale slip of 
a girl with a vividly red, immobile mouth, and big promi- 
nent grey eyes now lustrous with intense emotion. Mark 
had spoken to her once or twice in Mrs. Pellow’s shop; but 
she had always escaped from his conversation as soon as 
she could, and he used to suppose that Fred Stithian, her 
employer, had warned her against the parson. 

“Have you taken leave of your senses, Maud, to go 
paddling like that in the Pool? You’ve surely heard what 
a treacherous place it is?” 

“T belonged drownding myself,” said Maud sullenly. 

Here Miss Horton joined them. 

“Drowning yourself?” she echoed. 

“T been turned out by Mrs. Stithian,’ Maud explained. 
“She said if I didn’t go quick she’d strip the clothes off of 
me and turn me out naked. So I went quick, and when you 
come I belonged drownding myself.” 

“But does Mr. Stithian allow his wife to behave like 
this?” Mark asked. 

“°Twere what she saw him do with me made her so 
mad,’ Maud replied. 

“Well, never mind the cause of all this now,’’ Mark said 


246 The Heavenly Ladder 


quickly, for he was finding Miss Horton’s excited curiosity 
more than he could stand. “We must see about getting you 
home to your people.” 

“My people? My mother and father do you mean?’ 
Maud asked. “I haven’t got no mother nor father. I been 
to Pentine since Mrs. Stithian took me from the Home. I 
were found when I were a baby.” 

“Well, we must see what can be done for you,’ Mark 
said. ‘Meanwhile, you’d better come back with me to the 
Vicarage. And the quicker we get there the better, for 
we're both of us pretty well soaked.” 

Maud had by now lost the animation that her despair had 
lent her. She accepted with listless, leaden face whatever 
was suggested. Her eyes dull and heavy-lidded as those 
of a tortoise stared at nothing. Her red lips signified 
nothing. | | 

“One moment, Vicar; I really must speak to you for one 
moment, Vicar,’ Miss Horton murmured hurriedly. “Wait 
a minute, Maud. Try to wring some of the water out of 
your petticoats.” 

Mark reluctantly followed Miss Horton out of earshot of 
Maud. 

“Vicar, I must implore you not to take this girl back with 
you. I know Nancepean too well. They will say all sorts 
of dreadful things. I suspect—I strongly suspect that she 
is going to have a baby, and though of course nothing can 
excuse Mrs. Stithian’s conduct, at the same time she may 
have received a good deal of provocation. Let the girl come 
back to Tintagel for to-night, and I will take her up to town 
with me to-morrow and get her into a home.” 

There was no doubt that Miss Horton’s advice was good, 
and probably if Mark had received it from anybody else he 
would have accepted it, but just because it was Miss Hor- 
ton’s advice he declined to listen to it. 

“If it’s necessary to get her into a home I will make ar- 
rangements. It’s very kind of you, Miss Horton, to suggest 
looking after her; but she is my parishioner and I should 
prefer to manage this business in my own way.” 


War 247 


“But, Vicar, you cannot afford to quarrel with any more 
people down here.” 

Miss Horton could not have chosen a more tactless line 
of argument. 

“My dear lady, if you think that I’ve reached the point 
of considering whether I can afford to say this or do that in 
Nancepean you must have completely misunderstood my 
whole point of view from the beginning.” 

“T don’t know what they’ll say in the village when they 
see us all, and you and Maud Airey soaking wet.” 

“Say?” Mark repeated. “Say? Good gracious, Miss 
Horton, do you pay any attention-to the grunting of pigs in 
a stye as you go past?” 

Miss Horton glared at Maud with some of the hate that 
Mrs. Stithian must have felt. Not only was she likely to 
involve the Vicar more deeply with his hostile parishioners, 
but she was going to ruin this last walk during which until 
Maud’s arrival on the scene she had never known the Vicar 
sO sweet. 

“Damn the girl,” Miss Horton almost cried aloud, and 
tears of mortification stood in her eyes. 


CHAPTER XVII 
CRUELTY 


ISS HORTON had not been wrong about Maud’s con- 
dition, and Mark wrote off at once to Sister Esther to 
find out if the Community of St. Mary Magdalene could look 
after her. But before he had time to receive an answer the 
girl’s travail began, brought on prematurely by the events 
that led up to her attempt to drown herself. Aunt Penelope 
was bidden to take up her abode at the Vicarage and act as 
nurse, while Mark hurried in to fetch Dr. Bancroft from 
Rosemarket. Luckily the business started in the morning, 
and the road between Nancepean and the Vicarage was dry. 
Otherwise there might have been trouble with the car. The 
doctor was a taciturn man, but Mark and he found in birds 
a subject they could talk about during the drive out. Mark 
was grateful to the doctor for not showing any signs of in- 
quisitiveness about himself and the difficulties he was having 
with his parishioners. He had rather dreaded the stock 
advice he was given on the subject of managing Cornish 
people. 

Maud’s little boy, which was born early in the afternoon, 
seemed remarkably strong and healthy for a seven months’ 
child, although Aunt Penelope did thrust her jaw into 
Mark’s face and vow hoarsely that it were hardly so big as 
a rabbit. 

When Mark went into the drive to see the doctor off, the 
latter looked at him for a moment before bending down to 
start up the car: 

“She’s not one of your servants ?” 

“No, she was working for one of the farmers in my 
parish.” 

The doctor with a grunt swung the handle. 

248 


Cruelty 249 


“Well, I hope you won’t regret a decent action,” he said. 
“Ever see a lesser spotted woodpecker round here?” 

“T did years ago, but not since I came back.” 

“T saw one while I was driving through Lanbaddern 
woods last week. Well, I’d pack that girl off as soon as I 
could if I were you.” 

“T don’t believe you would, Doctor.” 

“What ?” 

The doctor was in the car by now and raising his hand in 
farewell settled down to the problem of the bad road before 
him. 

It was only when he had gone that Mark realized that 
neither of them had mentioned the war, and that he himself 
had not bought a paper when he was in Rosemarket. That 
showed how much of his feverish impulse to enlist had 
been prompted by a consciousness of the failure of the hu- 
man side of his activities. The possibility of being able to 
help Maud Airey was enough to bring home to him the fact 
that for the present at any rate he had his duties as a priest. 
Better is it that thou shouldest not vow than that thou 
shouldest vow and not pay. 

Mark was not foolish enough to suppose that the entrance 
of Maud Airey had been designed by Almighty God for the 
sole reason of answering his prayer for a sign. The answer 
to his prayer was his own ability to perceive that he had a 
duty toward his girl instead of blinding himself to that and 
only perceiving the duty he owed to his country of killing 
Germans. There were indeed moments when his inactivity 
seemed scarcely endurable. The atrocities in Belgium were 
the hardest things to take lying down. And the individual 
at home could not help feeling that he was taking them in 
this attitude. The tale of a Belgian child blinded and 
maimed, who was at this very moment actually in a hospital 
at Exeter, consumed one with a passionate desire not so 
much to avenge the deed as to show these bloody Germans 
that they simply could not be allowed to do such things with 
impunity. But just when Mark first heard of that mutilated 
child, the story of Maud Airey’s life at Pentine brought him 


250 The Heavenly Ladder 


up against a display of human cruelty much harder to for- 
give than the outrages of war. 

Sister Esther had written to say that the Community 
would receive Maud Airey at once; but when Mark spoke 
to the girl herself she expressed the utmost horror of enter- 
ing any kind of home, not so much on her own account as 
on the baby’s. Her own childhood in a home had seared her 
memory too deeply with its humiliations and punishments 
and deliberate abandonment of her to Mrs. Stithian. It was 
useless for Mark to argue that the kind of home provided by 
the Community of St. Mary Magdalene would be something 
far different from what she had experienced. Maud de- 
clared that she would rather die than enter such a place. 

“T know you can’t keep me here, but if you send me away 
I'll kill myself and my baby before I go there.” 

Mark consulted Aunt Penelope about Maud’s staying in 
the Vicarage for the present, which he suggested was pos- 
sible if Aunt Penelope herself would stay there. 

“Oh, I see, Mr. Lidderdale would like for me to stay to 
the Vicarage. Why, yes, I think it could be managed.” 

Mark was not aware of any criticism in the parish, because 
by this time he scarcely did more than nod to any of his 
parishioners, and with Miss Horton’s departure a certain 
amount of knowledge of what people were saying ceased to 
be unavoidable. He had given up going to Carwithen now, 
because he had returned to his first impression of Miss Lam- 
bourne as a woman whose venom was not less virulent be- 
cause it was coated in sugar. She in turn had ceased to 
attend his services. He had wondered several times if he 
had not been too hasty in believing her insinuations against 
the loyalty of Mrs. Evans; but every time that his doubt of 
Miss Lambourne prompted him to make overtures to his 
earliest friend as Vicar of Nancepean the dread of finding 
that Mrs. Evans really had believed the vile story about 
him made him draw back. He really preferred to lose her 
friendship for ever and be able always to hope that she had 
not made that particular accusation rather than take the risk 
of ascertaining that she had. After all, he told himself, 
Mrs. Evans must know that such things were being said 


Cruelty 251 


about him, and if she had felt any genuine goodwill towards 
him she would have put her pride and her jealousy on one 
side and gone out of her way to show her own belief in his 
innocence. 

Mark had never intended that Fred Stithian and his wife 
should escape from all responsibility for the girl they had 
misused; but when he heard the whole story his feelings 
were so terribly wrought upon by it that nothing less than 
a violent and ignominious death seemed to meet the case. 
He had waited until the child was baptized before he tackled 
Maud about her own conduct, in doing which, just because 
he disapproved so strongly of the part in it played by those 
who should have been the guardians of her purity, he was 
inclined to be much more severe with Maud than he really 
felt ; it was in trying to propitiate this severity that the girl 
told the revolting story. Mark was white and shaking with 
rage when he left the Vicarage and set out to interview Cass 
Dale with the intention of persuading him to pronounce 
whatever was the Methodist equivalent of excommunication 
against Mr. and Mrs. Stithian. He found the minister in a 
jovial and patronizing mood. The collapse of the rival 
Sunday-school, the emptiness of the church, and the Ishmael- 
ite existence that was now the lot of a man who at one time 
had seemed likely to prove a dangerous rival combined to 
make Cass Dale glow with condescension and charity. 

“You keep yourself too much to yourself, Lidderdale. 
It’s not good for a man to live too much within himself, 
You ought to understand the people here well enough to 
know that whatever you did you could never drive them 
into accepting the religion you’ve tried to force down their 
throats. You’ve taken your failure too much to heart. I 
dare say you’ve been a little tactless on occasions; but no 
amount of personal charm would have been strong enough 
to break down the prejudice against your religion. It’s a 
matter of temperament. The Cornish are temperamentally 
suited by Wesleyanism. .. .” 

“Look here, Cass, I didn’t come to discuss the problem 
of my religious future with you,” Mark interrupted. “I’ve 
come about this girl, Maud Airey.” 


252 The Heavenly Ladder 


“You’ve got her at the Vicarage, I hear,” said Cass. 

“She has had her child there.” 

“TI know. That has put up the backs of some of the 
farmers. But don’t think that I’m criticizing you for doing 
what you did. Not at all. I respect your motives. I don’t 
hesitate to call it a downright good Christian action. And 
I’ve told several of them as much pretty forcibly.” 

“Have you kicked Stithian and his wife out of the chapel 
yet?” Mark asked. 

The minister smiled. 

“T’ve no doubt that’s what you’d have done, Lidderdale,” 
he said. ‘You wouldn’t have waited a moment to hear the 
other side. There are two sides, you know, to everything.” 

“There is only one side to this,” Mark said fiercely. “That 
wretched girl was treated with diabolical cruelty by the 
people that took her as a child from a foundlings’ home.” 

Cass Dale looked unconvinced. 

“You must remember that I know the girl,” he said. 
“And I should be inclined to say that she was untruthful, 
not perhaps deliberately untruthful, but hysterically. A 
little mad, if you like.” 

“Well, if she is,” Mark exclaimed, “that alone is enough 
to condemn the Stithians, for I don’t suppose that the male 
rascal has had the impudence to deny that he is the father 
of the child. Huis wife’s behaviour proves that he was.” 

“Oh, but he does deny it,” said Cass. “And his wife says 
that she turned the girl out of the house partly because she 
accused her husband wrongfully and partly because she saw 
with her own eyes that Maud was trying to lead him on.” 

In his exasperation Mark could have broken up the 
hideous little parlour of Gilead where this discussion was 
being held. 

“They’re a pair of liars,” he exclaimed. “I tell you I’ve 
had the whole story of her life at Pentine from the girl’s 
own lips. It’s nauseating. It’s too horrible to repeat in 
detail. There are some things that one simply cannot re- 
peat, and the details of cruelty, of lustful cruelty, cannot be 
repeated. If I did, I should feel that I was in some way” 


Cruelty 253 


sharing in it. The mere words that are used to describe 
certain actions almost become actions themselves.” 

“But if, as I suspect, the girl is an hysterical subject,” the 
minister argued, “she is easily capable of inventing—or, 
rather, of imagining .. .” 

“Tmagining!”’ Mark burst in. “You can’t be taken away 
from a foundlings’ home at the age of twelve and spend the 
next’six years of your life on a lonely farm and imagine the 
things she told me.” 

“Well, what were they?” 

“T tell you I can’t repeat them. You’ve no right to ask 
me to. I give you my word that Fred Stithian and his wife 
are not fit even to enter your Chapel, while as for allowing 
him to get up and preach there, it’s blasphemy against the 
Holy Ghost.” 

“Of course, if I were convinced that he was as bad as you 
say he is he wouldn’t be allowed to preach. But it’s im- 
possible to accept the word of a notoriously hysterical girl 
against a man like Stithian when he’s supported by his 
wife.” 

“In other words,’ Mark said contemptuously, “you’re 
afraid to,” with which taunt he left Gilead. 

On his way up to Pentine, for if Cass dared not tackle 
Fred Stithian he must tackle the brute himself, he met 
Arthur Tangye. 

“Why, Arthur,” he said, “are you working here?” 

“Only gleaning for my mother.” 

Mark was on the point of telling Arthur that he would be 
better occupied elsewhere, when he thought how unwar- 
ranted such interference would seem nowadays. 

“Have you enjoyed yourself this summer ?” 

“Not so much,” Arthur replied, looking down. ° 

Mark hurried on, for he felt that if he stayed talking to 
Arthur he should forget his wrath against the Stithians in 
his own sorrow for happier days in Nancepean. 

Pentine was protected on the seaward side by a small 
grove of evergreen oaks, but even so it was the bleakest and 
most windswept farm in the neighbourhood. Not a flower 
grew in its garden; and not merely the town-place, but even 


99 


254 The Heavenly Ladder 


the land immediately round was given up to a number of 
scraggy tortoiseshell pigs. The house itself, bare of any 
greenery, looked savage enough even for the tale of horror 
of which it had been the scene, and the thought of how that 
miserable child must have regarded it shuddered across 
Mark’s imagination. He could scarcely bring himself to 
enter for dread of the vividness with which those events 
would be reconjured when he saw the very furniture and 
the hangings and the wallpaper that were the mute witnesses 
of what had been done. A nausea overtook him, but he 
fought it off and crashed upon the door with his stick. A 
dog barked behind the house, and a boy of about fifteen, a 
red-faced loutish lad with a strong likeness to his father, 
came round the corner and gaped at the visitor. The thought 
that this accursed imp had often been the cause of those 
infernal thrashings was too much for Mark. In an uncon- 
trollable impulse he picked up one of the round stones that 
bordered the path and flung it at the creature, whose shin it 
struck with such force that he ran blubbering and howling 
to the back of the house. 

At the same moment the front door was opened by Mrs. 
Stithian herself, a tall, thin-lipped woman with eyes like 
granite pebbles in a marine pool. 

“Where’s your husband?” Mark demanded harshly. 

“That’s no way to ask for anyone,” she replied. 

“Don’t stand there arguing with me. Go and find him,” 

“T’ll do no such a thing,” said Mrs. Stithian, folding her 
arms. 

At this moment the loutish boy came blubbering up behind 
his mother with the tale of what Parson had done to him. 

“Don’t let the little brute stand boo-hooing there,” said 
Mark. “Send him to find your husband.” 

“T’ll have you to the police-court for this,” she threatened. 

“Don’t talk about police-courts, woman,’ said Mark. 
“You'll have your fill of police-courts before I’ve done with 

ou.” 

“Go and fetch your father, Charlie,” she told her son. 
“Go and tell him that the parson is here, drunk or mad.” 

““Where’s he to?” the boy sobbed. 


Cruelty 255 


“Go and find him. How do I know where he’s to?” 

However, the farmer himself appeared on the scene as she 
spoke and coloured up deeply when he saw who the visitor 
was. 

“Stithian,’ Mark said, “I’m not going to waste time talk- 
ing to you. I’ve come here to thrash you.” 

“Charlie,” Mrs. Stithian screamed. ‘“‘Run and loose 
Carver. Fred, where’s your gun to?” 

“Charlie,” the farmer shouted, “you stay where you're to, 
my son. I don’t want no dogs and no guns neither. So 
you’ve come here to thrash me, have you, parson?” he said, 
turning to Mark with a coarse guffaw. 

“For the way you and your wife and that boy of yours 
treated that child you vowed to protect. I can’t very well 
thrash your wife, because if I did she’d get the sympathy 
of fools. But don’t think, Mrs. Stithian, that I keep my 
hands from you for any other reason.” 

“You’re a fine one, aren’t you, to talk so high,” the farmer 
sneered. “You’re a fine one to talk about wrongs done to 
children. . . .” 

This was just the cap that Mark wanted to explode the 
energy of his rage. It saved all that rolling up of sleeves 
and announcing what he was going to do. He swung his 
stick and caught the farmer such a thwack on his fat but- 
tocks that he roared with pain and, lowering his head, 
charged for his antagonist like a bull. Mark stood aside and 
caught him again on the same spot harder than before, 
dropped the stick, and when the farmer turned drove his 
fist with all his might into his jaw. The blow was a knock- 
out. Stithian lay motionless in the mud of his yard; and 
Mark, hardly able to keep his feet from kicking the gross 
red face out of human shape, turned and left Pentine. 

Yet by the time that he had reached the high road there 
was no sense of satisfaction in what he had done. 


If thou seest the oppressson of the poor, and the violent 
preventing of judgment and justice in a province, marvel 
not at the matter; for He That ts higher than the highest 
regardeth. 


256 The Heavenly Ladder 


Yes, but did He? Or was that kind of explanation merely 
the desperate subterfuge of defeated theologians? Was 
anything supreme over circumstance? And was not all good 
and all evil determined by its fortuitous concatenations? 


CHAPTER XVIII 
A CHRISTMAS LETTER 


he Vicarage, 
Nancepean, 
South Cornwall, 
December 22nd, 1914. 
My dear Rector, 

I’m sorry that I’ve been such a bad correspondent all these 
last months, but I’ve been in such an unsettled condition, 
changing my opinions and plans from one day to another, 
that I’ve felt that any letter would no longer be a letter from 
me by the time it reached Oxfordshire. I don’t believe that 
[’ve sent you more than an occasional postcard to let you 
know that I was still alive since the Bishop inhibited me. 
Or did I even write and tell you that he had inhibited me? 
Perhaps I should have obeyed him if by the time he had 
taken action I had still had any congregation left. But as 
by that time chiefly for reasons quite unconnected with 
my ecclesiastical behaviour I had nobody left I could not see 
my way to surrender ceremonies and services and teaching 
which I believe I am entitled to have and to hold and to 
preach. If for instance I had given way over Reservation, 
what was left to me? The church was already empty of 
men and women. If it had been empty of God as well, what 
was I doing in Nancepean? A woodlouse creeping over the 
lid of the font would have been as useful as I was. I have 
not only refused to surrender anything, but I have added to 
my ecclesiastical crimes in half a hope that the Bishop will 
finally take legal proceedings to deprive me of the living. If 
he does I shall have done some service to the movement be- 
cause it will make me look like a martyr. Of course, I shall 
not be a martyr. I mean so far as any spiritual advantage 


257 


258 The Heavenly Ladder 


to myself is concerned. But so many people will say that I 
am that there will be plenty of others who will believe them 
and derive great spiritual advantage from the whole futile 
business. I’m not writing cynically. I do really believe 
that the only way to redeem a very little of my failure will 
be to get myself flung neck and crop out of the living. 
When war was first declared I wanted to enlist, but I 
never could quite see my enlisting other than as a would-be 
beau geste to escape from an intolerable position. If I could 
have gone right off on the day war was declared and found 
a recruiting officer I might have avoided this feeling, because 
the consciousness that I had only one motive in enlisting, 
which was to put the Germans in their place by proving to 
them that they were not the equal of Englishmen, would 
have justified my action to myself. But within a week of the 
outbreak of war too many other motives were added to that 
first spontaneous impulse to chastise Germans. There was 
the feeling that people expected one to join up. This, of 
course, wasn’t true of parsons, but as a parson one had the 
feeling of uselessness and a sense of people’s asking each 
other why at such a critical moment in the life of the nation 
useless creatures like parsons should be allowed to exist. 
I knew that at the back of my mind I was despising my 
profession when I found myself admiring Drumgold, and 
actually going up to his house and watching him stick flags 
in a map with an air of authority. Hero-worship with 
Drumgold as the hero showed that I was already touched 
by the rapidly spreading hysteria of the time. Then there 
was the feeling of being out of it all; this, of course, was 
only another aspect of discontent with my _ profession. 
Youth seemed to be slipping away from my grasp. Thirty- 
three seemed a great age, and like a woman who perceives 
the shadow of spinsterhood it seemed to me imperative to 
make a last desperate clutch at life. Of course, this un- 
dignified state of mind soon passea, and one was left wonder- 
ing if people would not think it ridiculous for a parson of 
thirty-three to suppose that he was capable of being any 
conceivable use as a combatant. So far my doubts and 
hesitations were all due to looking at myself from different 


A Christmas Letter 259 


angles. Presently I began to give up looking at myself, 
and took to looking at the war. I began to grow tired of 
the superlatives that were being applied to it, tired of read- 
ing that it was going to change humanity, tired of hearing 
that it was a war to end war, and that it was a war in defence 
of small nations, for it seemed to me that however long it 
lasted it would be no more in eternity than the twinkle of a 
star in infinity. I began to be tired of the complacency with 
which people were settling down to be swallowed up in a 
mundane catastrophe merely because it was the biggest catas- 
trophe on record, and then as much more violently exasper- 
ated by the behaviour of people on whom a realization that 
the Germans might win was slowly dawning. The Ger- 
mans were worse, because in their case both the troops and 
the non-combatants got into a panic; in our case it was only 
the people at home that got frightened. Of course, they’re 
beginning to recover from it now; but all that despicable 
white feather business was pretty awful. Then came the 
Bishop’s paternal permission to join the forces if his sons 
in God could square their own consciences in the matter. It 
looks when put down on paper like mere contrariness, but 
I know that I was so much disgusted by the episcopal letter 
that I simply couldn’t avail myself of the permission and 
abandon Nancepean. I think what I felt, and still feel, was 
that the Bishop in making this announcement did it solely 
out of an idea that it was good form, from a desire to be 
well seen by the right people. I am not yet quite sure if I 
am what is called a pacifist. I think it’s clear that our Lord 
looked beyond wars to peace, but I don’t think that it’s so 
clear as it seems superficially that He meant non-resistance 
to apply to nations as well as individuals. Of course, if 
every individual practised non-resistance, all nations would 
equally do so in consequence; but until nations are made up 
of non-resisting individuals it seems to me that it would 
be wrong to allow one nation to override the rest. You’re 
really putting a premium upon force by doing so, and by 
surrendering all power into the hands of the nation that 
practises force you would be postponing peace for ever 
unless you were to have faith in Almighty God’s sudden 


260 The Heavenly Ladder 


pouring forth of His grace into the souls of the victorious 
nation. But would He do that? It looks almost blasphe- 
mous to ask such a question, but it seems to me that Al- 
mighty God never has worked through the greater to the 
less. Do you know any instance in history of a sudden and 
complete change of heart ina nation? Anything comparable, 
for instance, to the countless instances we have of the con- 
version of the individual? I confess I don’t. Besides, non- 
resistance by England to German aggression would not 
have been due to any Christian motive. The case was given 
away by the Radical paper which practically counselled us 
not to fight because we should gain far more by keeping 
quiet. That could never be a motive for not fighting. 

At the same time, I think it is high time that parsons began 
to talk about the spirit in which war ought to be waged. 
Merely to add fuel to the now almost universal bonfire of 
hate 1s a denial and degradation of Christianity. They have 
no business to stay at home and do this. If their hate and 
fear of the Germans is too strong for them, they ought to 
go and fight. The emotion of hate demands practical ex- 
pression, by which I mean physical expression. Abstract 
hate is as contemptible as abstract love. We must pray 
much harder, and when we preach, which at such a time 
should be as seldom as possible, we must preach decency. 
We are such a decent nation, we English, so much the most 
civilized masculine nation, that it really would be a mundane 
catastrophe if the war succeeded in turning us into Germans. 
I don’t think it will, because our sense of proportion is so 
quickly restored. We never really let ourselves be ruled for 
long by politicians or generals or priests or doctors or even 
by the press. By the way, I think we blame the press too 
much for the corruption of public decency. It seems to 
me that the press is merely the great cloaca maxima of 
national opinion. It makes a stench and gets clogged some- 
times so that sewer gas is exhaled, but how much worse it 
would be if we had no drainage system at all. People will 
talk as if our unpleasant habits were the result of the press 
instead of the press being the result of our necessities. 
What is the matter with our press at the moment is that 


A Christmas Letter 261 


the cloaca maxima has been stopped up by the military 
authorities, with the result that they’ve only themselves to 
thank if the country is being poisoned by sewer gas. Well, 
that’s enough about the war. We’re in no condition at 
present to discuss the rights and wrongs of it. All I hope 
is that what has started as a snowball won’t end as an 
avalanche. I was talking to a fellow back slightly wounded 
from the front about when it’s going to be over. He says on 
apparently good authority that French gives it till April, 
but that Grey says May. How much longer than any of us 
thought when it began! 

I had a sharp lesson a little time ago on the fruitlessness 
of revenge. In fact, I think that some of my rage against 
the Germans was worked off, and that I am seeing the 
absolute necessity of waging war in the right spirit just 
because of that lesson. A local farmer and his wife took a 
girl from a home for foundlings about six years ago. The 
man is a pillar of the chapel, the woman respectability in- 
carnate. He is a gross sensual bully, she thin-lipped, cold- 
hearted, but as sensual in her own way as her husband. 
In all the historic cruelty cases the woman has invariably 
been the leader, and in several of them the man has escaped 
punishment, because he was supposed either not to have 
known what his wife was doing, or to have been too indolent 
to interfere. Personally I should say that in most cases 
his had been the pleasure of a corrupt audience. In this 
case the woman took a delight in exposing the girl to every 
kind of sickening humiliation combined with actual violence. 
One of her—no, it can’t be written about. Her torture of 
the girl did not cease as she grew older, and the end of it 
was that the girl at the age of seventeen was seduced by 
the husband. Seduced is scarcely the word to use, for she 
was never allowed to have any self-respect to be led away 
from. Even the eldest boy about three years younger than 
herself was allowed to assist in the degradation of her 
personality. The girl became pregnant, and when she was 
seven months gone, the woman turned her out of the house 
with such ferocity that the wretched victim tried to drown 
herself. I can scarcely believe that this was done in a fit 


262 The Heavenly Ladder 


of jealousy, which is what the girl thinks. I should fancy 
rather that it was done as a kind of demonstration of the 
husband’s respectability. Anyway, it’s not worth while 
speculating about her motives. I took the girl in at the 
Vicarage with the intention of sending her to St. Mary 
Magdalene’s, and indeed did write about her to Esther. 
Unfortunately the shock brought on a premature travail, 
and she was delivered of a boy in the Vicarage. I was so 
much horrified by the girl’s story that when I could not get 
any assurances from the Wesleyan minister that he would 
excommunicate the farmer and his wife I rushed off in a 
rage and thrashed the man. Now I wish I hadn’t, because 
by doing so I seem in some way to have put myself on his 
level. By doing what I did (incidentally I pitched a large 
stone at the little fiend of a boy and only just kept myself 
from thrashing the woman!) I’ve practically made it im- 
possible to obtain any reparation. Before my action it 
would have been difficult enough to obtain a conviction 
from a Cornish jury, but now it would be impossible, because 
my own name would be blackened so successfully that I 
should become the culprit instead of the real culprits. How- 
ever, it has given me something to do to look after the girl, 
and the baby is a great delight to me. It’s rather a tax on 
my purse, and I’ve had to sell some of my books to provide 
necessities for the two of them. But it’s tremendously 
well worth it. In fact, just this one baby has given me 
something to work for again. My thwarted paternal in- 
stincts are blossoming freely. Don’t forget that one baby, 
when your whole congregation consists of four adults and 
two children, adds greatly to your importance. The mother 
is difficult. D’m almost afraid to give her much religion. 
She has been so starved emotionally that it’s like feeding 
a starving creature too generously at first. What a ghastly 
thought it is that homes for foundlings have nearly always 
been the product of genuine charity, and yet that they have 
nearly always made life a hell for those they were intended 
to succour. Imagine calling a wretched child Maud Airey 
because she was found in an area. It’s devilish, isn’t it? 
My great antagonist Major Drumgold became quite 


A Christmas Letter 263 


friendly with me over the war, and instead of spending his 
time writing to the Bishop about my ecclesiastical excesses 
devoted all his energy to discovering concrete gun-platforms 
and Germans of high rank in secluded cliff bungalows. 
Signalling to the enemy was incessant throughout the penin- 
sula. In the end the authorities grew so tired of his activity 
that they gave him the command of a skeleton regiment, the 
umpteenth D.C.L.I. He’s training them at the other end 
of the Duchy. I’m sorry to say that only one lad from 
Nancepean has enlisted, not because I want them to go, but 
because poor Drumgold counted on a feudal levy, and even 
the one that did join up thought the Garrison Artillery a 
safer billet. 

Mortemer has kindly tried to cheer our Christmas by 
sending me a wonderful set of figures for the Crib, and all 
of us, Aunt Penelope, Jennifer, Albert (who has been a 
trump all through my bad times), Dick, Lily, Maud Airey 
and the baby who has been christened David are going to 
spend to-morrow in arranging the church. 

Love to you all and thoughts of old Christmas Days in 
happier years. 

Yours ever, 
Met 


CHAPTER XIX 
THE CRIB 


HE morning of the vigil of Christmas was spent by 
Mark and his dependents in arranging the Crib, for 
which his old vicar had presented him with the most complete 
set of figures that could be procured. When he saw the 
splendid ox and ass, he had a sharp pang of regret that he 
had never been able to set up a Crib like this in the days 
when there would have been the children to enjoy it. There 
really was something futile about this elaborate representa- 
tion for the Prawles and Maud Airey. Even Miss Horton’s 
presence would have been welcome. What a Christmas-tide! 
Hate all round him here in Nancepean! MHate all over the 
WOTHC, |. ss 

They finished decorating the church just before the shut- 
ting in of a still and humid dusk. When Mark found that 
nobody had thought of bringing a lantern he sent the whole 
family home, for as the moon would not rise till late, and 
as they would all be coming down for midnight Mass, he 
thought that he would say the first vespers of Christmas by 
himself. 

A fathomless depression of spirit came over the Vicar 
when he found himself alone. He sat for a while watching 
the last glimmer of twilight fade from the windows, too list- 
less even to light a candle and begin the Office. Albert had 
forgotten to trim the sanctuary lamp, and the darkness over 
the tabernacle seemed to deprive him even of the Presence 
upon the altar. He tried to pray for his country, but it 
seemed an absurd impertinence. He tried to pray for his 
parish, but it seemed a waste of time. He tried to pray for 
his dependents, but it seemed a piece of insincerity. Last of 
all, he tried to pray for himself, and that was the greatest 
failure of the lot. 

264. 


The Crib 265 


What a pity that there would be no children to enjoy 
the Crib! It had been generous and considerate of dear 
Mortemer to spend so much money and take so much trouble 
over his present, but really it had been wasted on Nance- 
pean. He ought to have equipped some church with a large 
congregation that would have appreciated what he had done 
for them. Yes, what a pity about the children! Had he 
not been too hasty, perhaps, in breaking up the Sunday-school 
like that? Had he not really thought more of himself than 
of the children in the way he had behaved? Might not that 
hasty surrender have given a clear run to the vile tales set 
afoot by his enemies? Probably all sorts of slanders were 
being whispered now about Maud Airey and himself. He 
should soon be getting an anonymous letter accusing him of 
being the father of her child. But that kind of scandal hurt 
nobody. Perhaps not; but the other accusation had been in- 
finitely more vile than the vilest things they could whisper 
about Maud and him. He had known when he took the 
girl in at the Vicarage that he was inviting the parish to 
gossip. In a way, by a cynical standard, they were justi- 
fied in gossiping. But over the children . . . no, he simply 
could not have gone on with the school as if he were uncon- 
scious of the calumny. If he were to be given his first year 
as Vicar over again, he should not behave otherwise than he 
had behaved over the school. However, it was unprofitable 
to sit here like this on Christmas Eve brooding in a dark 
church. He rose and lighted the candles for Vespers. The 
saying of the Office did not give pleasure to his mind or 
bring peace to his soul. He was glad when he had finished. 
But he really must try to cheer up, so that the Christmas 
Eve party at the Vicarage would seem enjoyable to the others, 
whatever he was feeling himself. Before leaving the church 
he took a last glance at the arrangement of the Crib. No 
doubt it would look better when it was all lighted up; but 
by the flickering of his solitary candle the figures appeared 
dead and meaningless, like dolls in the window of a toyshop 
shut up for the night. What a pity Arthur and Susie and 
Donald and Maggie would not be at the party? What a pity! 

Outside in the churchyard Mark listened for a while in 


266 The Heavenly Ladder 


the darkness. Once he thought he heard gunfire at sea, but 
it was the waves thundering on the beaches deep in the caves 
on the other side of the Castle cliff. The night was as black 
a night as he had ever known. He was glad that he had sent 
the others home, for the road back through the valley was not 
going to be by any means easy walking. Indeed, it turned 
out worse even than Mark had anticipated, and there were 
moments when he felt stifled by the darkness to such a point 
that he wanted to sit down in the path and yield to it rather 
than go stumbling on his way dazed as if by excess of light. 
However, he persevered. As a matter of fact the struggle 
did him good, for he was so glad to reach the Vicarage 
gate and see the shine of lamps that he was able to be quite 
friendly and jolly with them all when he arrived indoors. 

Gradually, however, as the evening wore on Mark felt 
himself once more falling a prey to that dreadful depression 
which had overtaken him in the church. He would start 
some round game and forget what he had to do when it 
came to his turn. He found himself wondering if Albert had 
bought himself that white waistcoat out of the church funds. 
Since Drumgold went away Albert had had whatever money 
there was in his keeping. 

“Have you heard who they want for people’s warden, 
Albert? I don’t suppose Major Drumgold will offer him- 
self for election next Faster.” 

“No, I haven’t heard nothing,” Albert answered, and the 
little man looked as wise and important as he could, for a 
question like this gave him a sense of holding high office. 

“Toby,” said Aunt Penelope, shaking her fist at her eldest 
nephew, “put that filthy old pipe in your pocket. I’m 
ashamed for ’ee. I'll leave ’ee to my house next time Vicar 
invites ’ee to a party if you can’t behave more fitty. You 
belong to be a proper old noosance. A hog wouldn’t smoke 
a dirty old pipe like you belong.” 

“Oh, that reminds me,” Mark said. “I bought some cigars 
in Rosemarket for Albert and Toby. Where did I put them? 
Oh, yes, and a bottle of whisky. Where’s the whisky, Aunt 
Penelope ?” 

It was found at last, and a solemn drinking of goodwill 


The Crib 267 


took place, in which Mark forgot to join, but went and sat 
down in his armchair by the fire. 

“Ten o'clock,” he said presently. ‘“You’d better go and 
get your supper now. We'll start for church at half-past 
eleven sharp. Have the lanterns all lighted ready, so that 
we aren’t kept waiting at the last minute.” 

“Isn’t Mr. Lidderdale going to have any supper, then?’ 
Aunt Penelope asked. 

“T’ll have an egg and two or three pieces of toast in here.” 

Aunt Penelope threw up her eyes to Heaven and hustled 
everybody out of the study into the kitchen. When Maud 
brought Mark his supper, she waited uncertainly by the 
table as if she wanted to say something. 

“IT don’t want anything more, child,’ Mark told her. 

“Are you cross with me about something I’ve done, 
Mr. Lidderdale?” she asked, fixing him with her big grey 
eyes. 

“Of course not. Why should I be cross with you?” 

“T’ve thought more than once lately that you’d be glad to 
be rid of me and the lill baby. I do know he’s been crying 
terrible all this last week or two. But he’s been feeling a bit 
slight.” 

Mark shook his head with a smile. 

“Don’t worry about the baby, dear child. I’m glad to have 
the little thing. Why, he’s the most important member of 
my small flock. No, I’m just not feeling very well, Maud. 
Don’t worry yourself, but enjoy your Christmas like a sen- 
sible young woman.” 

“Your egg will be cold if you don’t eat it soon.” 

Mark got up and sat down to the meagre supper on the 
little round table. It was as difficult to crack that egg as if it 
were a pebble from the beach. 

“Mr. Lidderdale,’” Maud began screwing her apron round 
and round in her nervousness over what she was trying to 
say. 

“Well?” 

“Mr. Lidderdale, I'll never forget what you’ve done for 
me. And it makes I mad when Baby do cry so fierce. But 
you won’t ever turn against him?” 


é 


268 The Heavenly Ladder 


“No, no, Maud. I tell you I love your little boy.” 

She hesitated a moment or two longer, and then suddenly 
blurted out: 

“You wouldn’t grudge it him if you had to buy him his 
milk? Because I can’t feed him no more myself. Mrs. 
Prawle said she’d ask you about it; but she hasn’t said 
nothing, and I thought perhaps you was vexed when you 
found you was paying for his food.” 

“Not at all, child. Please don’t worry your head about 
such foolishness. Now run away, for I want to keep quiet 
till we go down to Mass.” 

The baby’s food would not add much, but all the same, 
Mark thought, the financial position was getting rather diffi- 
cult. Oh dear, he really must shake off this gloom, and the 
problems of money were not going to help him do that. 

When the time came to start for church, Mark made a 
tremendous effort to put himself in tune with the spirit of 
the great Christian occasion. But Aunt Penelope’s lantern 
did not seem to go before them to Church Cove as the star 
went before the wise men to Bethlehem, and he could not 
help thinking that for all of them the pilgrimage was a duty 
to be performed out of compliment to himself and not at 
all because their souls thirsted to bow down in worship before 
the Holy Child. 

“I suppose somebody will be informing the military 
authorities of signals seen toward midnight on Christmas 
Eve,’ Mark thought. “What time does the moon rise, 
Albert?” he added aloud. 

Albert shook his head in perplexity. He could as easily 
have given the date and time of the Last Trump. 

However, the gloom and depression of this walk was noth- 
ing to the horror that succeeded when the candles were lit 
in the church; for, while Mark had been laboriously trying 
to celebrate the mirth of Christmas at the Vicarage, his 
enemies had descended in the darkness and made of the 
Crib an obscene caricature. They had chosen the figure of 
St. Joseph to represent Mark himself. The garments had 
been tarred and the face whitewashed, and Mark’s biretta 


The Crib 269 


had been cocked on one side of its head. Round the neck was 
hung a placard on which was printed in sprawling letters: 


NOW MAUD LOOK AFTER OUR BABY CAREFULLY AND DON’T 
CARRY ON YOUR GAMES WITH TOBY PRAWLE WHEN I'M NOT 
LOOKING. 


The figure of the Blessed Virgin was dressed up in 
woman’s clothes. What was written on the placard round 
her neck cannot be recorded without wounding too deeply 
the feelings of Christian souls. 

Suddenly Maud cried out in terror: 

“They're my clothes! They’re my clothes, the clothes I 
wore when I was to Pentine!” 

She screamed loudly and hugged the baby to her breast. 

“Look—see what they’ve done to the baby Jesus!” she 
cried. “Oh, lev me take my baby away out of here. Lev 
me take my lill baby away.” 

She turned to run out of the church, but Mark bade Albert 
stand by the door, for he feared what she might not do in 
her distraught state. The image of the Holy Child had been 
smashed to pieces with a hammer. A barrowful of farm- 
yard dung had been flung over the adoring shepherds. An 
empty beer-bottle was swinging above the stable in place of 
the star. 

Aunt Penelope became voluble on the subject of the defile- 
ment and destruction until Mark checked her. But as he 
moved toward the sacristy to vest himself for Mass, she burst 
forth again and he heard her say: 

“Tf I was Passon, I wouldn’t have no service. No, I 
wouldn’t. Not a word would I say. No, I wouldn’t. Id 
turn right around and go back home to bed before I’d have 
one word of a service. I’d soon show ’em if I wasn’t going 
to be treated proper. I wouldn’t have no old services.” 

“Penelope,” Mark called sternly from the sacristy door, 
“didn’t I tell you to hold your tongue?” 

Yet when he began Mass he found himself thinking that 
Penelope had voiced his own feelings, and it was all he could 
do to continue. He did not reserve the Blessed Sacrament as 


270 The Heavenly Ladder 


usual, because the notion of leaving the Presence confronted 
all through the night of Christmas by that obscene and sacri- 
legious pantomime was too horrible. 

The moon was up when they came out of church, and 
Mark bade the others go ahead of him, for he did not want 
to hear their comments on the outrage, nor their guesses at 
the authorship of it. He did not feel that he could pray to- 
night in the desecrated church, but when he tried to pray 
outside he found that he could not pray there, and soon he 
followed the lanterns bobbing along the road toward the 
Vicarage. 

When he reached home, Penelope told him that Maud had 
gone to bed immediately. 

“She was terrible vexed, Mr. Lidderdale. Well, ’tisn’t nice 
to see such things wrote about you and put up for all to see. 
I don’t care who hears me say it, but it were a nasty, mean, 
spiteful trick to play anyone. I took off the cards what was 
wrote on, Mr. Lidderdale. What would ’ee like for me to do 
with ’em?” 

“Burn them, burn them, Penelope.” 

“T thought perhaps you might like for to take and show 
them to the, police.” 

“The fewer people that see them, Penelope, the better. 
Go and burn them at once.” 

Mark was sorry that he had not spoken to Maud for a 
moment before she went to bed. He would have liked to 
say a few words to console the poor child. What fiends 
men could be—what fiends! 

It was dark and miserable when Mark walked down to say 
Mass on Christmas morning. He had told Albert not to come 
and serve him, but to rest quietly at home until the eleven 
o'clock Mass. He wanted to clear up the wreckage of the 
Crib himself so that by midday when they all came to church 
the scene of the night before would be like a bad dream. He 
wanted also to make reparation for his own lack of faith 
last night by offering the Mass in perfect submission to the 
will of God. He averted his eyes from the Crib when he 
entered the church, because he was afraid of his own weak- 


The Crib 271 


ness and did not wish his mind to be so tormented as to be 
incapable of meditating upon the Incarnation. 

Mark felt happier after Mass, and with a prayer for Divine 
help when once more he had to face the horror of the Crib, 
he turned to fulfil his task. When he was half-way along 
the nave, he was startled to hear the sound of an infant’s 
wailing coming from the direction he was going. He won- 
dered for a moment if the shock of the sacrilege had de- 
prived him of his senses. Then for a moment he asked him- 
self breathlessly if Almighty God had deigned to work a 
miracle in this church for the healing of his heart and the 
consolation of his soul. Was this the prelude to such a 
favour as had been granted to St. Anthony of Padua? 

It was indeed a living creature that lay there weeping on 
the straw, but it was not the Divine Babe of Bethlehem. It 
was Maud Airey’s baby lying where last night had lain the 
figure of the Holy Child. Mark knelt down to try to hush 
the infant’s cries and found a letter by his side in the straw. 

Dere Mr. Liderdale pleese forgiv me for wat ime doing 
To make your troubles wurse than wat they was befor but i 
cannot bare it no more 1 Feel you must hate me after Last 
Nihgt and that is more than i can bare to think They will 
not leeve me in piece to the vilage but when i pars by they 
lauf and poke there fingers at me but i never told you about 
this becos i did not want to make you more angry but when 
they took my cloths like that and dresed up the vurgin mary 
in my cloths i saw in your face that you coud not bare it no 
more and when i saw how they had broke up the baby Jesus 
Crist i thort they would brake up my baby next so that is 
hwy i hav not took him with me were i am going pleese do 
not think i am going to kil or dround myself becos i am not 
becos i would not do that but pleese look after my baby kindly 
that is hwy i have put him were the baby Jesus Crist was so 
that you woud not be vext but take him and look after him 
he will not be a grate expence jest now and Mrs. Prawl do 
now wat food he rekwires it do not cost verry much pleese do 
not make a surch for me pleese do not becos if i coud not 
go away like this i woud dround myself so as not to be a 
trubble to you dere Mister Liderdale becos you have been so 


272 The Heavenly Ladder 


kind i cannot thank you in the way i woud like but i hav 
been all the nihgt riting this Leter and 1 canot say the wurds 
i woud like to say but i Feel them all the same i have not 
had a verry hapy time in my life and 1 woud not like to put 
my baby to a home for por childrin becos he woud be un- 
hapy like i was and perraps be beeton tho he coud not have 
a baby thank god like his muther 1 hop you will forgiv me 
for wat ive done puting my baby to the chursh like this and 
pleese pleese do not make a surch for me that is all i arsk and 
pray and pleese do not think i will be bad because I wont only 
just go away and take survis somewere to a place were they 
canot lauf at me and say you was doing wat they rote on the 
vurgin mary 1 hop you will have a mery crismus and a hapy 
new yere with fondest love to all from 
yours Sinserely 
Maud. 


Mark wondered what he ought to do. Maud had prob- 
ably walked into Rosemarket in the darkness; but it should 
be easy enough to overtake her if he set out after her at once. 
She had no friends, no money, scarcely any clothes. He 
looked at the image of the Blessed Virgin and saw that she 
had taken the clothes with which her persecutors had decked 
it. That looked as if she meant what she said in the letter 
about not drowning herself. Perhaps the greatest kindness 
he could do the poor girl was to let her vanish like this from 
Nancepean for ever. If he caused a search to be made she 
probably would take her life. Meanwhile, the first thing to 
do was to take the baby to the Vicarage. It could not be 
good for a child to be left all this time in a cold church. 
Mark picked up the wailing infant and hurried back with it 
along the valley. On his way he made up his mind to send 
Albert after Maud with money for her to go to London and 
a telegram to have her met at Paddington by somebody. Not 
Miss Horton, because she would remind her too much of 
Nancepean. If he telegraphed to Mortemer, he would send 
somebody from St. Cyprian’s. That would be better than 
telegraphing to St. Mary Magdalene’s on Christmas Day. 

Mark did not wait to explain matters to Aunt Penelope, 


The Crib 273 


but hurried down to the Prawles’ cottage and roused Albert, 
who took Toby with him to help in the search for Maud. 
However, at dusk they came up to the Vicarage to say that 
they had been unable to hear news of the girl anywhere. 
The next day Mark went down to Penzance, hearing at 
Rosemarket Station that a young woman like Maud had 
taken a ticket there early that morning; but there was no 
sign of her in Penzance, and supposing that she had some- 
how found a refuge, he gave up the search. 


CHAPTER XX 
VISITATION 


FTER this disastrous Christmas Mark made an effort to 

be reconciled with his former friends; but the effort 
came too late. What might have been accepted earlier as a 
manifestation of genuine goodwill was now considered a weak 
and cowardly attempt to curry favour with his parish because 
he was afraid of the consequences of his obstinacy. He put 
up with several rebuffs and still persevered; but one January 
day of east wind he called at the Hanover Inn and found 
Mrs. Evans coldly hostile. He reproached her with desert- 
ing him at a time when he most needed her support. 

“T don’t know how ever you can say such things, Mr. 
Lidderdale,”’ she exclaimed. “’Iwas you that flung back 
in our faces whatever we belonged to say and whatever we 
belonged to do to help you. I wouldn’t have listened to 
what no one said against you; but if somebody just shuts 
themselves away and says not a word, what’s all the world 
going to think?” 

“T see,’ said Mark. “You think that silence is a sign 
of guilt?” 

“T do think that anyone with a clear conscience would 
surely come out into the open and not hide themselves away.” 

“Well, what do you think about me, Mrs. Evans? Do 
you think that I’m the father of Maud Airey’s child? Do 
you think that ve murdered the wretched girl? I hear that 
is the latest tit-bit of foul gossip. Do you think that I 
was living in sin with Miss Horton? Do you think .. .” 
He paused. “If you believe these tales you believe them 
because you have allowed your judgment and your sense of » 
decency to be corrupted by this vile jealousy which has poi- 
soned my existence here. So long as I was content to let 

274 


Visitation 275 


myself be your private property I could do nothing wrong. 
The moment I allowed some of my other parishioners to see 
something of me all your goodwill turned to malice.” 

“°Tis well you should twist all things to suit yourself, 
Mr. Lidderdale,”’ she said bitterly. 

“T’ve twisted nothing,’ Mark replied. “It’s your dis- 
torted mind that sees things all twisted. Oh, well, there’s 
nothing more to say. I’m sorry I’ve missed Donald. I 
thought he’d be home this afternoon.” 

“He only went out when he saw you come in,” Mrs. 
Evans said cruelly. 

Mark flinched. Without another word he left the Hanover 
Inn, quite clearly convinced that it was idle to struggle any 
longer against the prejudice of Nancepean. 

All through that Spring he lived more and more within 
himself, with nothing to break the monotony except the 
illness of David the baby, who died early in April. Nothing 
had been heard of his mother since Christmas morning ; and 
Mark had given up scanning the columns of the Western 
Morning News for the report of an unknown woman found 
drowned. The poor little baby had been so ill practically 
ever since his mother went away that Mark could not but be 
glad that the short life was finished. Moreover, the child 
would presently have become a serious problem, with the 
cost of living rising and the uncertainty of his guardian’s 
future. The death of the baby set free Aunt Penelope to 
return to her own cottage, and Mark was back in his old 
nocturnal solitude, although his existence was now not much 
more of a solitude by night than it was by day. 

In such circumstances it was not surprising that Mark 
should brood a great deal on the war. Everybody eats more 
rapidly when he is alone, and what is true of eating is true 
of thinking. Paradox though at first it may sound, time 
passes more swiftly in solitude. When to this general speed- 
ing up of Mark’s inner life was added the detachment of 
opinions formed in solitude, it was natural that he should 
presently find himself ahead of the current point of view 
at home about the war. Partly, of course, his inclinatior 


276 The Heavenly Ladder 


already to regard the outbreak of the war as a folly and the 
continuation of it as a crime was due to the foxy human 
mind’s calling sour the grapes of a thwarted ambition; but 
whereas thwarted ambitions console themselves by this eva- 
sion, thwarted emotions, if they cannot express themselves 
directly, do so indirectly. Mark denied any gratification of 
his paternal instincts either as man or priest enlarged his 
affection for the children of Nancepean to an immense com- 
passion for the suffering populations of Europe. 

The war must stop; and the only way that this cessation 
could be achieved was by tending the dying glimmer of 
peace in the hearts of men and women. When during the 
summer visitors came occasionally to his church, Mark al- 
ways preached the gospel of love from his pulpit; but un- 
fortunately such a gospel was at that time unpatriotic, because 
any action or any word that seemed likely to foster any- 
thing but hate for the enemy was considered to prejudice 
recruiting. It was a strange delusion of the military authori- 
ties that a year after the outbreak of war men could still 
be persuaded to enlist by inducing them to hate the enemy. 

Mark’s sermons were very mild, but they soon earned him 
the reputation of being a pro-German. At this period the 
stay-at-home population faced by the noble deeds of those 
who were fighting their battles for them suffered acutely 
from a sense of inferiority which turned every other person . 
into a liar. Unlike the ambassador of the apophthegm they 
lied at home for their country. Anybody who was not clever 
enough to lie for his country believed from an equally unim- 
peachable motive of patriotism the lies told him. The com- 
bination of lying and credulity turned life into a dream, and 
a very bad dream too. 

The people of Nancepean were experts in inventing fictions 
about the morality of their neighbours, but they were poor 
hands at warlike fictions. However, they made up for it by 
patriotic credulity, and when the visitors who heard Mark’s 
sermons started a new swarm of rumours the gobe-mouche 
parishioners swallowed them eagerly. Mark was a pro-Ger- 
man! Huis very name had something Germanic about it. The 


Visitation 277 


Pope was a pro-German: Mark was addicted to ritualistic 
services. One or two visitors wondered if the fellow wasn’t 
actually a German spy. And that so-called altar? It was un- 
commonly like a concrete gun-platform. All that business 
too with candles in a church by the edge of the sea. It made 
one suspect him of signalling to submarines. Why did he 
always keep that tower so carefully locked? Benzine? What 
more suitable place to supply a submarine with benzine? He 
was always walking about by himself too. That in itself was 
suspicious. Several visitors wrote to the War Office about 
him, and Mark became a suspect in a card-index. In fact, 
he became two suspects, because his name was spelt in one 
denunciation with a single “d” and in another with two “d’s.” 
Another visitor wrote to the Admiralty about him, and he 
became a third suspect, because the Admiralty suspects were 
not communicated to the War Office for fear the War Office 
should collect more suspects than the sum total of the civil 
population, in which case the war would come to an end, 
which would bea really serious blunder. In the end a highly 
specialized branch of the Secret Service, which proceeding 
from the War Office, the Admiralty and the Foreign Office 
partook of the nature of each, but which only endured by 
playing off any two of its authors against the third, secured 
him for its list of suspects by swapping a duplicate suspect 
against him with the War Office. Inquiries were set on foot. 
Mark’s letters were specially recommended to the Censor, 
who discovered that he was in the habit of asking when this 
infernal war was going to end, and of making various deroga- 
tory remarks about members of the government. It was 
felt that the defence of the realm justified a quiet hint’s being 
given to the Bishop of Bodmin to convey to this indiscreet 
son in God that he would be well advised to keep a bridle 
on his tongue and a brake on his pen. 

The Bishop was deeply shocked; but, as he told Arch- 
deacon Doublebois, it was just what he had feared. How- 
ever, he broke his rule of not communicating with Mark by 
sending him the following letter: 


278 The Heavenly Ladder 


Lis Escop, 
Bodmin. 
September 20th, 1915 
Dear Mr. Lidderdale, 

I have now waited patiently for over a year in the hope 
that the discipline under which I placed you would long ere 
this have restored you to a better mind. So far from this 
being the case, | am inexpressibly pained to hear that to your 
disloyal and contumacious behaviour towards your Bishop 
you have added what at a grave crisis like this in our na- 
tional existence I can only characterize as disloyalty to your 
country. Political agitation ill befits a Presbyter of the 
Anglican Church at any time, but political agitation at such a 
moment is more than unseemly, it is criminal. Lest you 
should think that I am the victim of prejudice and inclined 
to condemn you without hearing what you have to say in your 
defence, I give you formal notice that within the next fort- 
night I shall hold an episcopal Visitation of your church in 
accordance with ancient ecclesiastical precedent to inquire 
into your alleged breaches of Church Law, in which con- 
nection I may refer you to the 123rd Canon. Furthermore, 
I shall inquire into your alleged tendency to preach in your 
church sermons that are calculated to encourage the enemy 
and affect the progress of recruiting in the Diocese. It may 
be, and I devoutly pray to Almighty God that it will be, it 
may be that I shall find you restored to a better mind and 
willing not merely to accord me the canonical obedience you 
owe, but also to make all amends in your power for the 
painful effect your sermons have had on the minds of those 
who have listened to them. In regard to the sermons I may 
add that I am not taking action in response to letters I have 
received, but at the request of the Naval and Military Au- 
thorities, who have already satisfied themselves by the most 
careful inquiries of the truth of the allegations against your 
preaching. Let me beg you most earnestly to consider your 
position during the fortnight which will elapse before I hold 
my Visitation. It will be most inexpressibly painful for me 
to take legal proceedings against you, but it is only fair that I 
should warn you most solemnly that unless I find you in a 


Visitation 279 


better mind such is my intention. Is it too much to ask you 
at a time when the country is distracted by the prosecution of 
this most dreadful but most just and righteous war to curb 
your wilfulness for the sake of domestic peace and to subor- 
dinate your personal opinions to the good of the country? 
Can you not bring yourself, to use the touching colloquialism 
of the moment, can you not, will you not bring yourself to 
“do your bit’’? 
Believe me to be, 
Sincerely your Father in God, 
George Bodmin. 
To which Mark replied: 


My Lord Bishop, 

There will be a trap waiting for you outside Rose- 
market railway-station if you will let me know the day before 
the time of your train and the date of your Visitation. 

Yours truly, 
Mark Lidderdale. 
P.S. If you intend to come in the morning, please let me 

know two days beforehand, so that I can order a 

proper lunch. 


The Bishop arrived on the fourth of October. Mark did 
not go into Rosemarket to meet him, but notified Isaac 
Jago, who had been elected people’s warden when Major 
Drumgold resigned, possibly in the hope that the Vicar would 
be compelled to give up having Albert Prawle as his church- 
warden inasmuch as Albert was Isaac Jago’s carter. Wiailliam 
John Evans had been nominated, but he had refused to 
stand. Mark took a good deal of sardonic pleasure in the 
thought of the Bishop’s driving out with Isaac Jago. The 
farmer would find it difficult to state what precisely were the 
grievances of the parishioners, and as a local preacher he 
would find it hard to persuade the Bishop that he was being 
kept away from the church by his Vicar’s behaviour. 

“T had rather expected that you would meet me in per- 
son,’ the Bishop told Mark, after he had been lowered from 
Jago’s high dog-cart and nearly collapsed into Mark’s arms 
who was superintending the unloading from the drive. 


280 The Heavenly Ladder 


“T’m sorry, my lord, but you would either have had to put 
up with a dull drive or a bad lunch, and I assumed that you’d 
prefer the dull drive. Besides, I thought you might care to 
begin the inquest—I should say the Visitation—by interview- 
ing one of the churchwardens. Good morning, Jago!” He 
turned with a curt nod to the farmer, who was scowling at 
him. 

The Bishop drew Mark aside and asked in a whisper what 
the churchwarden’s name really was. 

Hi fea WOR Okey 

“Ah, J! I thought it couldn’t really be D. It has been 
puzzling me all the way out. You ought to have let me 
know by letter what his name was,” he added indignantly. 
“Is he going to lunch with us ?” 

“Not he,” Mark laughed. “You’re not going to lunch with 
me, Jago.” 

“What?” the farmer shouted. “Never!” 

“It’s all right, Jago, don’t get angry. His lordship hoped 
you were; but I knew that our spoons in the Vicarage 
wouldn’t be long enough for you. Now, what time will you 
want the trap to drive back, my lord?” 

“Well, really, I’m not yet quite in a position to say,” the 
Bishop replied. “I wish to interview some of the parish- 
ioners after we have had our personal talk. I wish, how- 
ever, to be back at Lis Escop in time for dinner.” 

“You'd better catch the six o’clock train, and have tea at 
Roscorla,” Mark advised. 

*“Roscorla ?” 

“That’s Mr. Jago’s farm. Do you hear, Jago? His lord- 
ship will have tea with you at half-past four. ll drop him 
at the gate.” 

“Very pleased to see the gentleman,” the farmer mut- 
tered, and whipped up his horse, thankful to be able to put 
the Vicarage and the Vicar behind him. 

Indoors, Albert Prawle, dressed in his black clothes, was 
waiting to be presented to the Bishop. 

“That’s all right, Albert,” Mark said, when the little man 
had, with half a genuflection, grasped the Bishop’s out- 
stretched hand and showed his appreciation of the honour by 


Visitation 281 


giving it such a tremendous grip that his lordship seemed 
to be in some doubt of his friendliness. The courtesy paid, 
Albert withdrew backwards from the room. 

“Your churchwarden seemed in a great hurry to be off,” 
the Bishop remarked. 

“He has to get back to his cottage and change out of his 
black clothes. He is Mr. Jago’s carter, and he had to take 
advantage of the dinner hour to pay you his respects, my 
lord.” 

“Dear me,” said the Bishop, who was beginning to look 
thoroughly bewildered. “That must make things rather 
difficult sometimes.” 

“Oh, it does,” Mark agreed cheerfully. “Very difficult 
indeed. But Albert is such a good man with horses that 
the other churchwarden doesn’t like to sack him. Of course, 
on Sundays it’s quite all right, because Jago never comes to 
church.” 

The Bishop shook his head. 

“Sad! Sad! Very sad! I managed during the drive out 
to learn something of what he feels at being driven away 
from the church.” 

“Forgive my directness, my lord, but do the feelings of a 
man who for the last twenty years has never attended church 
except for the harvest festival matter a very great deal? 
He is one of the chief local preachers, and was only elected 
churchwarden because it was thought in the parish that he 
could annoy me in that position more than any other 
parishioner.” 

“But what a triumph, what a triumph, Mr. Lidderdale, if 
by the moderation of your services you could have induced 
such a man to abandon the chapel for ever! Not that I am 
by any means in favour of promiscuous and often ill-con- 
sidered proselytizing ; but here surely there would have been 
some justification for making an effort to wean him from 
nonconformity.” 

“I’m afraid my church is too much of a cockatrice’ den for 
that weaned child.” 

The Bishop looked annoyed. 


282 The Heavenly Ladder 


“Tsaiah,’’ Mark said quickly. “I wasn’t trying to be im- 
pertinent to your lordship.” 

“T did not suspect you of impertinence, Mr. Lidderdale,” 
the Bishop replied majestically. 

Mark suggested a stroll round the garden, for the noise 
of argument from the kitchen warned him that the final 
throes of the lunch were likely to be painful. 

“Dear me,” the Bishop said, “you have a very remarkably 
beautiful garden.” 

“It was largely planted by my grandfather, who was a 
great amateur of uncommon shrubs and trees,” Mark said. 

“Oh, indeed? I had not grasped that your grandfather 
was once Vicar of Nancepean. That is most interesting. 
Surely you would be sorry to give all this up?’ The Bishop 
indicated with an ample gesture the palms and yuccas and 
draczenas, the thickets of bamboos, and the clumps of New 
Zealand flax. 

“T’m afraid, my lord, that this is not quite the Eden you 
imagine. If I were turned out of it, there would be no need 
of a flaming sword which turned every way to keep me out 
of it for the rest of my life.” 

The Bishop frowned. 

“That is the kind of remark, Mr. Lidderdale, which if it 
were made in public I should consider deplorable. Even 
here, in the privacy of your own garden, it strikes me as 
extremely ill-judged and not in very good taste. I fancy that 
during your painful disagreement with your parishioners 
you may have forgotten that other people have susceptibilities 
which can be wounded. Your sermons have, as you know, — 
deeply pained a large number of people, and among the 
several duties I have to perform to-day is to counsel you— 
nay, more, to warn you very seriously—to keep a strict 
control over your tongue in this period of unparalleled na- 
tional stress and anxiety. If in this matter you disregard 
my fatherly warning, you may find it very unpleasant, for 
at such times the Authorities are apt to move with discon- 
certing suddenness.” | 

“IT suppose you are alluding to one or two sermons I 


Visitation 283 


preached this summer about our attitude as Christians to the 
war?” Mark said. 

The Bishop inclined his head with a grave nod. 

“T suppose,’ Mark went on, “that it is hardly necessary, 
to say that my words were distorted and the effect of them 
grossly exaggerated.” 

“Pardon me, Mr. Lidderdale, the Authorities inquired into 
the matter and satisfied themselves that there were grounds 
for serious complaint. However much as Christians we 
may deplore the dreadful calamity that has overtaken the 
world, our duty as Englishmen is to assist our country by 
every means possible to destroy the dragon of militarism 
which threatens to swallow the whole of Europe in its hideous 
maw. Finally, Mr. Lidderdale, I am not exaggerating my 
own feelings when I say that I regard it as a Holy War 
waged against the forces of Evil.” 

“But, my lord, I have never thought that the war was 
anything but a just war. All that I have tried to say in 
my sermons has been that we ought not to lose sight of the 
spirit with which we entered upon our task. There is an 
increasing tendency to conduct this war for war’s sake. The 
people at home become more prone to cant every day. This 
may be a just war, but that’s not to say that war is just. 
However, I can assure your lordship that my words have 
been distorted, and I believe your lordship will credit me 
with frankness if with nothing else.” 

“T am quite willing to believe, Mr. Lidderdale, that you 
did not intend to seem in the slightest degree unpatriotic; 
but unless you had allowed yourself too much latitude in 
your utterances, I cannot bring myself to believe that the 
authorities would have levelled this complaint. This is not 
a time when people with heavy responsibilities are given to 
wasting their time in the investigation of trifles.” 

Mark allowed himself to smile. 

“T assure you, Mr. Lidderdale, that it is no laughing mat- 
ter,” the Bishop declared emphatically. “I have warned you 
that you are playing with fire. If you do not choose to pay 
attention, the consequences to yourself may be graver than 
you imagine.” 


284 The Heavenly Ladder 


Luckily, Aunt Penelope interrupted the conversation by 
calling out across the lawn that lunch was ready. 

“Dear me, lunch! Perhaps you will be good enough to let 
me wash my hands, Mr. Lidderdale?” 

Mark led the way into the house. 

When he and his guest were seated at table there was no 
sign for several minutes of any food. Mark was just going 
‘to ask the Bishop to excuse him while he paid a visit to the 
kitchen to find out what had happened when Aunt Penelope, 
looking very red and angry, came in and whispered hoarsely 
in Mark’s ear: 

“The omblick’s all scat up.” 

“Well, make another one.” 

“There isn’t no more eggses.” 

“But surely you didn’t use the whole of that dozen for the 
omelette?’ Mark said. ‘Please excuse these domestic de- 
tails, my lord, but we are not much accustomed to visitors.” 

“Oh yes, we did,” Penelope said. ‘Every one we used, 
and one that was left over from the last dozen so well.” 

“Well, Penelope, surely you can manage something? His 
lordship is hungry.” 

“T’m sure he is, pore old chap,” Penelope replied. “But if 
he feels so leery as all that how don’t ’ee lev me open the tin 
tongue, till the beef be roasted fitty. ’*Twould keep his 
stomach from calling out too much.” 

“Well, bring something, Penelope, and don’t stand jabber- 
ing there,” Mark said, wondering if he should have to drop 
his napkin and recover his gravity under the table. 

“Pray, do not worry, Mr. Lidderdale. A piece of bread 
and cheese is really all I require.” 

However, in a minute or two Penelope came back to say 
that the beef was ready. 

During lunch the Bishop talked about Tennyson and al- 
lowed controversy to subside for a while. 

“You wrote a critical study of Tennyson, did you not, my 
lord ?” 

“Yes, I managed to produce a small work. A great poet, 
Mr. Lidderdale. And a good man, Mr. Lidderdale, and a 
gentleman. At the same time he was curiously touchy in 


Visitation 285 


many ways. He disliked very much losing at backgammon. 
I once had the privilege of playing with him, and he was so 
much irritated by the contrariety of the dice that he knocked 
the board off the table. I remember at the time that the 
outburst struck me as almost elemental. Nor did he care 
much for criticism of his verse. I remember that I once 
asked him if he had ever noticed that in The Lady of Shalott 
he had used ‘bearded’ as an epithet for comets and for barley 
within a few stanzas of each other. And he clearly resented 
my pointing out to him what I should describe as a lapsus 
calam.” 

As soon as lunch was over, the Bishop became his pontifical 
self again and ceased to talk about the poets and peers he 
had known. 

“Perhaps you will now show me your church, Mr. Lidder- 
dale,” he said in solemn accents; but he looked very much 
taken aback when Mark informed him that it was twenty 
minutes’ walk away. 

“Are we driving ?” he asked. 

“T’m afraid that we’re not,” Mark replied. “The road is 
really only a track for farm carts, and I think your lordship 
will find it less tiring to walk.” 

Mark nearly laughed aloud when he saw the Bishop nego- 
tiating the track along the valley between Church Cove and 
the Vicarage, the mud of which, after some recent heavy 
rains, made his gaiters look more like a gamekeeper’s than a 
bishop’s. 

Dr. Tomlinson walked round the church in silence. He 
looked at the Stations of the Cross, and frowned. He looked 
at the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and frowned more 
deeply. He looked at the large crucifix over the pulpit, and 
scowled. 

At the end of his inspection he turned to Mark and said in 
a Rhadamanthine voice: 

“It is worse than I thought. It is far, far worse than any- 
thing I had ever imagined.” 

He asked Mark a few questions about his services, al- 
though, as he pointed out, it was scarcely necessary to ask 
questions when the evidence of his illegal practices was so 


286 The Heavenly Ladder 


abundantly clear in the outward trappings of the church. 
Finally, he announced that he should like to visit one or two 
of the parishioners in order to assist him in the grave deci- 
sions he should presently be called upon to make. 

“T’ll show you the way, my lord.” 

“No, no. I would rather be alone, Mr. Lidderdale. I fear 
that there can be little profitable conversation between you 
and me after the defiant manner in which you have replied 
to my questions, and I prefer during the short time I can 
spare for investigation to be quite alone, Mr. Lidderdale.” 

“As your lordship wishes,” said Mark, with a bow. He 
pointed to Pendhu hill and explained that Nancepean lay on 
the other side. “About half an hour’s walk.” 

“Half an hour?’ the Bishop repeated. “‘But is there no 
conveyance ?” 

“None,” Mark replied. “Mr. Jago of Roscorla is giving 
you tea, and he will drive you to the station.” 

“You have done yourself no good by your behaviour to- 
day, Mr. Lidderdale. No doubt it may strike you as an 
excellent joke to have nearly succeeded in making this Visi- 
tation a farce. In my letter I warned you that I should come 
in accordance with ancient ecclesiastical precedent to inquire 
as Bishop into your alleged breach of Church law, and I 
referred you to the 123rd Canon. Once more I solemnly 
invite you to tell me if you intend to give up the Service of 
Benediction and the repetition of such things as the Litany 
of Loretto and the Litany of the Sacred Heart ?” 

“T shall not,” Mark declared. 

“Very well. Then I formally forbid the continued use of 
this service, and I order you to submit for my approval or 
disapproval any service whatsoever you wish to use in your 
church, apart from those in the Book of Common Prayer, or 
those for the use of which I have given a general ean 
throughout the diocese.” 

“TI refuse,” Mark said. 

“T appeal to you to obey me. With the most solemn ear- 
nestness I remind you of the promises you gave at your 
Ordination, of the declarations you made at your Induction, 
and of your Oath to pay true and canonical obedience to your 


Visitation 287 


Bishop in all things lawful and honest. I take upon myself, 
Mr. Lidderdale, I take entirely upon myself all the responsi- 
bility for exacting your obedience.” 

“T regret, my lord, that I cannot see my way so to shelve 
my own responsibilities. I admit my failure in Nancepean, 
but, believing as I do that Almighty God has a purpose for 
all things, I am determined not to escape from my failure by 
a feeble compromise. I do not believe that by surrendering 
I should help in any way the spiritual health of this parish. 
I do not believe that by resigning I should bring one soul 
nearer to God. I wish to make it perfectly clear that I have 
done what I have done because I believe that it was right to 
do it. Nothing but my forcible ejection from this living will 
prove that I have the courage of my convictions. I have 
nothing more to say, except that I regret very much that your 
lordship should consider that I have tried to turn your Visi- 
tation into a farce. Such was not my intention. I did not 
ask you to visit my church. It lay with those who did to 
make a suitable provision for your lordship’s comfort and 
convenience.” 

“T do not absolve you from the very grossest discourtesy, 
Mr. Lidderdale,” the Bishop said. “I consider that you have 
behaved outrageously in not making the necessary arrange- 
ments to lend a little dignity to my Visitation. In view of 
your defiant behaviour it was the least you could have done. 
How far did you say the village was ?” 

“About half an hour’s quick walking.” 

“Atrocious! atrocious!” the Bishop muttered to himself, 
and without saluting Mark he set off on his walk. 


CHAPTER XXI 
DEPRIVATION 


ARK heard nothing more from the Bishop personally ; 
but the word went round the diocese that Dr. Tom- 
linson was making up his mind to institute legal proceedings 
against him in the Bishop’s Court, that paradox of legal 
procedure in which the Bishop is himself accuser and judge. 
Kennedy, who perhaps felt that he had not done all he 
might to help his fellow vicar, came down from Chypie 
to try to persuade him to give way. 

“It’s not the moment for an ecclesiastical fight,” he said. 
“The war makes that sort of thing look like a petty squabble. 
You'll have no sympathizers. Give way now, my dear 
fellow, and then later on when you’ve pulled your work to- 
gether—I mean to say when you’ve won back the confidence 
of your people—you can start again.” 

“Tf what I am doing will be right in times of peace, it 
is equally right in times of war,” Mark replied. “My point 
is that if the English church is a part of the Catholic Church 
we can’t always be cutting our coats according to the recog- 
nized clerical cloth. Every yard we have won in our long 
battle has been won by individuals who have refused to fall 
back from the advanced positions they have seized. The 
same arguments have always been used by the cautious. One 
of my earliest memories is of my father being tackled first 
by an archdeacon and then by a bishop. He gave way and 
died a miserable man in consequence. Rowley didn’t give 
way, and his expulsion from Chatsea did more to help the 
Movement than anything.” 

“But Rowley’s case was different,’ Kennedy argued. 
“Rowley had got his people. The Bishop of Silchester 
deliberately wrecked a going concern. Forgive me, my dear 

288 . 


Deprivation 289 


fellow, when I say that Nancepean is not a going concern. 
I’m not blaming you. I don’t think that even Rowley could 
have made it a going concern; but the fact remains that so 
long as your church is practically empty your enemies can 
claim that it is empty on account of your services.” 

“But how does that affect the fundamental dispute?” 
Mark demanded, “Either the Church of England believes 
in the Real Presence or it does not. If it does, the Bishop is 
wrong; and if he is wrong I should be committing a sin in 
obeying him by giving up Benediction.” 

“Frankly I doubt if your position is tenable in the matter 
of Benediction. Even the Romans can’t have it without 
episcopal permission.” 

“That’s not quite accurate,’ Mark said. “The Roman 
Bishops can regulate Benediction, but they cannot forbid 
its: 

“But this is not the moment,” Kennedy argued, “to fight 
for Benediction. When the war is over, I know that several 
priests in this diocese intend to take up a firm and united 
stand, but they feel that this is not the moment to win 
public sympathy for such a stand.” 

“In other words,’ Mark said bitterly, “let’s get on with 
the war. Loud cheers.” 

“Well, and personally I don’t think that’s such a con- 
temptible attitude as you imply.” 

“Look here, Kennedy, do you believe that you as a priest 
have the power to turn bread and wine into the Body and 
Blood of Jesus Christ ?” 

“Of course I do.” 

“T wonder if you really do believe it. If you do, I can- 
not understand how you dare to argue that this is or is not 
a suitable moment to bring home that stupendous fact in 
every way you can. Surely if God really is upon your altar, 
war and pestilence might sweep the world, and it would 
matter nothing. Not the moment to argue about or make a 
stand for Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament! You know 
as well as I do that, although the Bishop will pretend that 
he has forbidden me to use it because it is a service not to 
be found in the Prayer Book, the true reason will be his 


290 The Heavenly Ladder 


disbelief in the Real Presence. If I were to give way now ] 
should put myself in the wrong. There would be no excuse 
for the way I’ve treated my Bishop. I should have been 
merely insolent.” 

“But surely Benediction is not to be fought for as one 
would fight for the Mass?” 

“Why not?’ Mark demanded fiercely. “What is Bene- 
diction except a demonstration of our desire to avail our- 
selves of the Divine privilege granted to us in the Mass? 
And surely this of all others is the very moment to do that?” 

“Well, I don’t believe that it is,’ Kennedy declared. 

“No, because you don’t believe in the Real Presence,” 
Mark replied. 

“What rubbish!” Kennedy’s pink face flushed crimson 
with indignation. “What rubbish you allow yourself to talk, 
Lidderdale.”’ 

“My dear Kennedy, you can’t believe in It. And when 
you all argue with me about this, I begin to wonder if the 
Church of England really does believe in It either.” 

Stephen Ogilvie wrote Mark a long letter imploring him 
to give way, but Mark answered him very much as he had 
answered Kennedy. Drogo Mortemer advised him to give 
way. So did Heriot. So did Chator, writing explosively 
from St. Wilfrid’s, Notting Hill. Even Cyril Nash, who 
had been to Nancepean and understood better than the others 
the state of affairs there, thought that perhaps, all things 
being taken into consideration, it was advisable to give way 
for the present. But Mark paid no attention to any of 
them. 

Then the Bishop in accordance with the provision of the 
Act of 1840 appointed a Commission to report if there was 
a prima facie case on which proceedings might be taken 
against the Vicar of Nancepean. Renewed efforts were 
made to bring the matter before some tribunal which Mark 
would accept, even though it would not be recognized by the 
State, and would therefore have no power to coerce the 
Vicar of Nancepean, should he refuse to abide by its de- 
cision. However, Mark saved any farther argument by re- 
fusing to pay any more attention to such a tribunal than he 


Deprivation 291 


intended to pay to the sentence of the Bishop promulgated 
from his Court in the Cathedral. The Bishop agreed to 
such a tribunal if the Vicar of Nancepean would promise to 
abide by its decision, but the Vicar of Nancepean would not, 
and he begged all his friends to give up trying to arrange 
matters. 

Sometime in January Mark was summoned to the Bishop’s 
Court, but he refused to attend. The Bishop decided that 
all the charges against him were proved, and early in Febru- 
ary he gave his judgment and deprived the Vicar of Nance- 
pean of his benefice. 

The Bishop’s difficulty was how to get another priest to 
take Mark’s place at a time when so many of the clergy 
were away at the front as chaplains. In the end he had to 
come himself and give a visible sign to the parish that Mark 
was no longer the vicar. There was something about Dr. 
Tomlinson’s personality that roused Mark to do all he could 
to make him look idiotic, so inasmuch as all the sacred 
vessels belonged to himself he removed them to the Vic- 
arage, and left nothing as he thought with which the Bishop 
could celebrate. There did remain, however, the cup in 
which Miss Horton had been wont to pour out the Vicar’s 
morning tea after Mass. With this utensil for chalice and 
with some bread with which he had provided himself in 
order to avoid having to use wafers the Bishop celebrated. 

Meanwhile, Mark locked himself into the Vicarage and 
waited until he was ejected, as he supposed he should be 
ejected, by the police. 


CHAPTER XXII 
THE STRANGER 


FORTNIGHT later, in much the same way as elderly 

retired colonels were dug out by the Military Authori- 
ties, the Reverend Herbert Windimere Dowling was dug out 
by the Bishop to minister to the spiritual needs of Nance- 
pean. This greybeard, who rode a tricycle, had for many 
years been incapable of more active work than was implied 
in looking after one of those funny little Gothic churches 
that the English and the Germans used to be fond of erect- 
ing in Latin pleasure resorts. Anxious to do his bit and 
release a younger clergyman for the needs of the troops, 
he had returned from whatever minor resort in the Riviera 
had been accustomed to his wintry ministrations. He went 
to live at the Hanover Inn, where he was a great deal more 
comfortable than he would have been at the Vicarage; but 
because Mark refused to surrender the Vicarage Mr. Dowl- 
ing felt that he had a grievance. The scandalous way he 
was being treated by the deprived incumbent became another 
legend in the district, where it was everywhere reported and 
generally believed that Mark had on several occasions shot 
at the Reverend H. W. Dowling from behind a hedge, had 
knocked him off his tricycle, and had made faces at him 
through the East window while he was celebrating. 

The truth was that the Bishop wanted Mark to abandon 
the Vicarage without the intervention of the police, while 
Mark was as equally determined that the police should 
intervene, so that his expulsion from Nancepean could be 
given the maximum of effective propaganda. For Mark 
the most serious problem was money. So long as he had 
the money to pay the Prawles they would see about his sup- 
plies; but he did not fancy that their fidelity would endure 

292 


The Stranger 293 


beyond a month of going without their wages, perhaps not 
even so long. 

Every morning when Mark walked up to Chypie to hear 
Mass, Kennedy urged him strongly to leave the Vicarage. 

“What do you gain by holding out?” he asked. “Old 
Cobweb’’—this was Kennedy’s name for the Reverend H. 
W. Dowling—“Old Cobweb is perfectly comfortable and 
happy at the Hanover, but so long as he can say you’re 
keeping him out of the vicarage the Bishop will be able to 
consider himself the martyr. It’s not as if you had a number 
of devoted souls who would suffer from your abandonment 
of the parish.” 

“I suppose you’ve been talking over the situation with 
Mrs. Evans,” Mark suggested. “You’ve got very serious 
latterly, Kennedy. The war seems to have wiped out most 
of your sense of humour, together with a lot of other 
things.” 

“You’ve turned so bitter, Lidderdale. Whatever the 
Bishop has done, it was owing to your own behaviour that 
he was able to do it. And, although you feel that the people 
have treated you badly, you must remember that they feel 
exactly the same about your treatment of them.” 

“T wish you’d try to grasp that I have a very definite griev- 
ance against my parish,’ Mark said. “No, I don’t propose 
to tell you what it is. It really doesn’t matter what you or 
anybody else thinks with only a superficial knowledge of the 
circumstances that have brought about the present state of 
affairs in Nancepean. I cannot go into certain matters 
merely with the object of defending my action. I don’t 
defend my action. I don’t defend myself. But until the 
Bishop sends a policeman to eject me I shall remain in the 
Vicarage. And while I am there and make use of your 
church, Kennedy, I should be grateful if you would give 
up trying to argue with me. Otherwise you will put me to 
the inconvenience and fatigue of walking the eight long miles 
to Polamonter every morning.” 

Kennedy shook his head sadly. 

“Tl say no more, Lidderdale, for I realize that no man 
can fully understand another man’s motives.” 


294 The Heavenly Ladder 


The sense of failure and the depressing effect of Mark’s 
solitude was increased by the grey March weather. Spring 
came as late as Lent that year. It was seeming impossible 
to wait much longer for the Bishop to call in the aid of the 
police; and a letter from Miss Horton threatening to invade 
Nancepean again was almost the last straw. 


My dear Vicar, she wrote. I wonder if you received the 
letter I sent you from Nish just before we had to evacuate 
the town. I have had a really thrilling time and was right 
through the retreat. I am staying with my sister-in-law and 
have my dear old Rover with me again. He knew me per- 
fectly well even in my nurse’s uniform. I have just heard 
about the dreadful events in Nancepean, and I am wonder- 
ing very much if you would care for me to come down and 
stand by you. I have been given three months’ leave to re- 
cover from what I’m bound to say was rather a strenuous 
time. But you know how energetic I am, and how I hate 
doing nothing. I am longing to hear all the news of Nance- 
pean, and I honestly believe that even you would be a little 
interested to hear some of my experiences. I loved the 
Serbians. They were so plucky. I quite lost my heart to a 
certain Captain Popovitch, a great blond giant of a man, but 
I lost sight of him in Corfu. Poor fellow, I’m afraid he 
may have died. However, I did not set out to tell you of 
my adventures, but to ask you if there was nothing I could 
do for you. Rover sends his love. 

Yours very sincerely, 
Isabel Horton. 

Just send a postcard “yes” or “no,” or if you telegraph 
I can come at once, because my brother is coming back on 
short leave in a day or two and my sister-in-law will enjoy 
having him to herself. 


b 


Mark told Aunt Penelope not to allow anybody to come 
near the house while he went in to Rosemarket and sent a 
telegram. 

“This telegram will be sure to reach Essex to-night?” he 
asked anxiously at the post office. 


The Stranger | 295 


“Oh, I think so,” the young woman said languidly. “Miss 
Hoskins, this telegram will get to Essex to-night, won’t 
it P?” 

“Why shouldn’t it?’ Miss Hoskins countered disagreeably. 

“It’s very urgent,’ Mark almost pleaded. “I'll read it 
through, shall I?” 


Horton, Kings Dainton, Essex 
Conditions here make visit absolutely impossible 
Lidderdale 


He supposed that he ought to have put in Miss Horton’s 
Christian name, but not even on a telegram could he bring 
himself to write “Isabel.” 

When Mark reached the turning down to Nancepean and 
was hesitating for a moment whether to take it or walk 
round the longer way by Chypie in order to avoid passing 
through the village, a tall, thin man of foreign appearance 
who had been studying the signpost raised his hat and asked 
him if there was an inn at Nancepean. 

“Yes, the Hanover Inn.” 

The stranger asked if it was comfortable. 

“Quite comfortable.” 

“And really quiet?” 

“Extremely so.” 

Mark wondered who the stranger could be. He had long 
outlived the stage of supposing that every human being not 
immediately recognizable was a spy; but this man’s unusual 
questions, coupled with his slightly foreign appearance, did 
make him entertain the suspicion for a moment. 

“No, I’m not a spy,” the other said with a sarcastic smile. 
“Nor does this small hand-bag—my only luggage—contain 
a complete signalling outfit. And, although my hair is black 
and curly and my skin dark, I am not a foreigner.” 

Mark admitted that he had asked himself the question. 

“And a very natural question for a clergyman to ask,” the 
stranger said. “Why shouldn’t you be allowed to do your 
bit? Why shouldn’t you suppose for a moment that the 
future of the British Empire rests upon your initiative? 


296 The Heavenly Ladder 


I’m really sorry to disappoint you by not being what I seem. 
I really am. My own sceptical mind is delighted when I find 
appearances belied. But I can sympathize with the credulous 
mind, though frankly I think that it is enjoying itself a 
little too heartily at the present. Such a debauch of myth- 
making !” 

Mark was wondering to himself while the stranger was 
talking if he should offer him the hospitality of the Vicarage. 
Presumably he was not conventional and would take such 
an invitation in the right spirit. It would bea relief to have 
somebody to talk to again, somebody, moreover, who was 
apparently quite free from the stock opinions of the mo- 
ment. Unless he had some kind of companionship, Mark 
did not feel that he could stand the isolation of his existence 
much longer. He should soon have to leave the Vicarage 
and gratify the Bishop by a tame surrender. 

While Mark was revolving this plan in his mind the 
stranger had lapsed into silence, and was now regarding him 
with an amused expression. 

“I’m sorry to interrupt your daydream,” he said, “but 
unless you have some valuable information to give me about 
this inn—what is it called? Oh yes, the Hanover—I think 
I’d better be getting along, for if it does not suit me I shall 
have to continue along these empty coasts until I do find 
just the spot for which I’m looking.” 

“TI wonder if you’d care to spend a little time with me in 
my vicarage,’ Mark asked. “I live rather economically, 
and if you want luxuries you’ll have to buy them for your- 
self, because I have scarcely any money. You’d be quiet 
enough.” 

“Can I have a convenient window for signalling to sub- 
marines and a convenient cave or cellar for storing the 
petrol with which I supply them?” the stranger inquired 
gravely. 

“No, really, I’m in earnest,” Mark said. “I ought to ex- 
plain that I have just been deprived of my living . . .” 

“Ah, congratulations,” the stranger interposed. “What 
have you been doing, getting drunk? Or seducing the wife 
of one of the sidesmen ?’ 


The Stranger 297 


“My offences were ecclesiastical,’ Mark replied. “As a 
criminal you will find me dull.” 

He had involuntarily assumed his companion’s manner of 
speech as the best way of bringing him down to a simple and 
more natural way of expressing himself. 

“Well, it’s really very kind of you,” the stranger said, 
“but I don’t feel that I ought to take advantage of your re- 
freshing lack of suspicion. You have been deprived of a 
living, but I have been deprived of civic rights. I object 
to being conscribed, and I am proposing to avoid it as long 
as I can.” 

“A conscientious objector ?” 

“Not, I fancy, in the usual significance of the term. That 
is to say I have no religious qualms about fighting. What 
I object to is forming fours. To me the liberty of the 
individual is infinitely more important than the freedom of 
small nations.” 

Mark once more pressed the stranger to accompany him. 
He was thinking that he might be able to build up some kind 
of edifice for himself out of the material that was left lying 
about after a certain amount of verbal destructiveness. 

“Here is my card,” said the stranger. “Let me see, have 
I given you the right name? Yes, that really is my name. 
Fox. Horatio Fox. I had several sets of false cards 
printed, because I really am not at all anxious to be con- 
scribed. It might astonish you to know how strongly I feel 
on the subject of my personal liberty.” 

They walked along together by the more circuitous road 
to the Vicarage, Mark congratulating himself upon a pleas- 
ant way out of his boredom and Mr. Fox evidently much 
gratified to have found a patient and intelligent listener. 


CHAPTER XXIII 
IMPRESSIONISM 


R. FOX was delighted with the Vicarage. 

“At last!” he sighed. “Do you know, this is the first 
time since August, 1914, that I have been able to believe that 
we shall one day be at peace again. Now do tell me the 
history of your ecclesiastical troubles. I know and care so 
little about ecclesiastical troubles. But I am sure that the 
ecclesiastical troubles of such a hospitable clergyman as 
yourself will have a peculiar quality of their own.” 

Mark gave Mr. Fox an account of his time at Nancepean, 
not omitting, as usually, the real cause of his bitterness, for 
he found it much easier to be confidential with this stranger 
than with his friends. 

“Extraordinary,” Mr. Fox commented when the narrative 
was finished. 

“That people should be such swine?’ Mark said. 

“No, no! Oh no, no, indeed I don’t find that at all 
extraordinary. What I do find extraordinary is that appar- 
ently you believe in all that kind of thing. How do you do 
it? You can’t be just a credulous nincompoop, or you would 
certainly have been positive that I was a spy.” 

“T don’t know,” Mark said. “Some people would say I 
was more credulous in believing that you weren’t a spy. Any 
excess of scepticism in one direction implies credulity in 
another. It’s not really less credulous to believe in nothing 
than to believe in everything.” 

“Ah now, come, you’re taking the discussion into the 
region of merely verbal logic, and that’s as good as taking 
it nowhere. Let’s begin with the rock on which I always 
strike—personal immortality, by which I mean that when 
I die I shall retain my self-conscious ego. If I believed 
that, I shouldn’t have much difficulty with the rest of it. 

298 


Impressionism 299 


There is no rock like that in the ocean of a material philos- 
ophy.” 

“I’m not sure that there aren’t several,’ Mark objected. 
“For instance, I come to grief over the finiteness of the uni- 
verse, for even though, as we are informed, there may be 
a star-cloud estimated to be six trillion miles away, the light 
of which takes a million years to reach us, that is far from 
infinity. And what is finite in space cannot be eternal in 
time. Therefore it had a beginning. In other words, it 
was created.” 

“Wait a minute,” said Fox. “In that case surely you are 
arguing against immortality rather than in favour of it?” 

“Not at all, because it is clear that my immortality cannot 
be stated in terms of this finite universe. But if, as I am 
arguing, the universe is finite and not eternal, the Creator 
will ultimately be left without the created, which is to 
annihilate the Creator and is to me unimaginable. That’s 
one of my rocks.” 

“Yes, and it’s also what is called a heresy,” Fox inter- 
posed. 

But Mark did not stop to argue this. “Another of my 
rocks,’ he went on, “is that the most recent astronomical 
theory of the origin of our solar system inclines one to sup- 
pose not only that our sun is the centre of the universe, but 
that it may be the only star with a planetary system. Fur- 
thermore, the tidal cataclysm caused by the gravitation of a 
visiting star, which was what probably sent earth and the 
rest of the planets and their satellites spinning off on their 
own orbits, was also probably exceptional. Now it is, to 
say the least, extremely improbable that any of the other 
planets are inhabited, or, if they are, that they are inhabited 
by a form of life in the least like man. Such an hypothesis 
would seem quite as improbable as immortality to the ideal 
observer. If, then, by this extraordinary accident to one 
sun alone of the fifteen hundred million stars estimated to 
make up our universe the conditions that made human life 
possible were produced, I see no reason against supposing 
that by another equally extraordinary accident God should 
incarnate Himself in one of those human beings. The rock 


300 The Heavenly Ladder 


I strike on is that the more knowledge of his Creator that 
God allows man to acquire, the more it bears out the intuitive 
knowledge of Him granted by revelation. I could easily 
have disbelieved in immortality when science hung the 
world in a crystal firmament, but, when I think of that star- 
cloud number six thousand and something and its remoteness 
of six million million million miles, I cannot presume to be 
confidently sceptical of immortality. And then, to step down 
from these stellar immensities into the minute world of the 
entomologist, I come to grief again over mimetic insects. I 
can extend the age of the earth to any number of million 
years you like, but I still can’t accept accidental variation 
as the complete explanation. Still less can I accept what 
amounts to mere chance as the explanation of the compli- 
cated relationships between certain caterpillars and certain 
ants. The biologists won’t allow us to believe that the insects 
themselves are conscious of their behaviour, with which 
theory I feel inclined to agree, but I cannot refuse to believe 
that some universal mind is conscious on their behalf. Once 
I believe in that Mind I believe in a creative God, and once 
I believe in a creative God my reason revolts from supposing 
Him to be an omniscient and omnipotent Being with the 
destructiveness of an ape.” 

“But I do not see why destructiveness should be attributed 
to this Being merely because such a Being sees no advantage 
in preserving the self-consciousness of every individual when 
the physical constituents of his personality no longer exist.” 

“It would be merely destruction,’ Mark argued, “to allow 
self-consciousness, which is what I assume is what you call 
the soul, and then annihilate it. It’s obvious that without 
man, Nature, red-toothed and red-clawed if you like, would 
work with the maximum of efficiency judged as a vast whole. 
For what reason is man allowed to develop to the point of 
self-consciousness merely to be destroyed? For what reason 
is he allowed to imagine immortality and spend his life on 
earth in the shadow of a vast delusion ?” 

“But I don’t believe in this rational Creator,” Fox sat 
“though He’s not the rock on which I strike. I’ve sunk 
long before I reach Him. Yet, convince me of my personal 


Impressionism 301 


immortality, and I’ll accept God the Father, God the Son, 
and God the Holy Ghost with avidity. Some people manage 
to believe in an immortality to come by believing in an im- 
mortality that always was. I think that they’re in a stronger 
logical position than the orthodox believers. I can conceive 
that what always was always will be, but I simply cannot 
believe that what never was always will be. And I wonder 
if you really do believe in your personal immortality. It 
seems to me that if you did you would be so utterly indiffer- 
ent to everything that happened in this material world. . . .” 

“Great saints have been,’’ Mark interposed. 

“Well, really, you’ll forgive me if I say that I cannot admit 
any peculiar saintliness in excess of credulity. To return 
to yourself, surely what is making you unhappy is the con- 
viction at the back of your mind that your labours in Nance- 
pean have been all to no purpose? You came here with an 
ideal religion to which you hoped to convert people, and all 
that happened was that you were slandered and reviled. I 
maintain that, if you really did believe in what you claim to 
believe, you wouldn’t mind what was said about you by your 
enemies. That immortal substance of you could not be af- 
fected by calumny. It’s the feeling that there is no immortal 
substance and that the fragile evanescent form of flesh pro- 
claiming your humanity and sheltering for awhile your per- 
sonality has been irreparably hurt which makes you so re- 
sentful. I should not object to conscription if I believed 
that I had an immortal soul; but, believing as I do that this 
life is all I have, I see no reason why I should sacrifice it 
wholly or in part for the benefit of others.” 

“T don’t think it’s really possible to argue about one’s 
belief in immortality,’ Mark said. “But I am quite clear 
that I do believe in it most fervently.” 

Yet actually while he was making this affirmation, Mark 
was wondering to himself if he meant what he said. It was 
not so much that he was shaken by his guest’s arguments, 
for he had heard them often enough before; but the per- 
sonality of the tall thin man leaning back so serenely in that 
deep armchair impressed him with some of its own con- 
fident nihilism. He had on Mark the effect of an accom- 


302 The Heavenly Ladder 


plished conjurer who with a gesture makes a familiar object 
dissolve into nothing. 

“Forgive the impertinence,’ Mr. Fox was saying, “but 
were your parents religious?” 

ik CS i 

“And perhaps your grandparents ?” 

“Ves.” 

“T was sure of it. The more I observe the religious tem- 
perament, the more I find that in nearly every case it is in- 
herited. Now if the religion in which you claim to believe 
is true, you must admit that it is very unfair that you should 
start with a great advantage over somebody like myself 
who has inherited no religious tendency of any kind?’ 

“Not necessarily,” Mark said, “for the more I am given 
by God, the more I have to pay to God.” 

“No, no, that’s an evasion of the point at issue. I’m not 
attempting to discuss the rewards and punishments of re- 
ligion. I’m discussing faith without any question of what 
one does with that faith. Let us suppose that I die to-night. 
Very well, my soul, as you would call it, rises from the husk 
of my body like a butterfly from its chrysalis and is con- 
fronted by that immense shadowy concept you call God. 
‘Ha—ha,’ says God, ‘you did not believe in Me when you 
walked about the earth in that rapidly putrefying bit of 
flesh which you thought was yourself. Well, here I am all 
the time. What have you got to say for yourself now?’ 
‘Superficially, God, the laugh is on Your side,’ I should 
reply. ‘But before You proceed to condemn me to what- 
ever punishment You have selected for my lack of faith, let 
me ask You one or two questions. First of all,’ I should 
say, ‘are You omniscient?’ ‘I am.’ ‘In that case,’ I should 
continue, ‘You knew that I did not believe in You.’ ‘I 
knew it perfectly well.’ ‘Secondly,’ I should continue, ‘are 
You omnipotent? ‘I am,’ ‘In that case, why did You 
allow me not to believe in You? You had only got to give me 
perfect faith, and I flatter myself I should have kept all 
Your commandments. Indeed, I have a much bigger griey- 
ance against You than You have against me. At the present 
moment You have arranged for a mundane war to take place. 


Impressionism 303 


In that war thousands of human beings are being slaughtered 
or dying of disease every day, some because they were in- 
spired to fight from vanity, some from false shame, some 
from a sense of duty to their fellow men, some because they 
were so situated that they could not avoid fighting, some 
from ambition, some from professional conscientiousness, 
and some, but very few, because they believe in You. Now, 
if I, when I ruled that piece of flesh which is now the sport 
of worms, had been granted faith in You, I would willingly 
have died in the Great War simply because it was pleasing 
to You. Instead You let me die sceptically in my bed. It 
may be Your idea of Divine Justice, but it is not mine.’ ”’ 

“But have you ever wanted to believe?’ Mark asked. 

Mr. Horatio Fox hesitated for a moment and frowned. 

“No, frankly, I have not,” he replied at last, yet some- 
how not quite frankly. “But then again, it is up to God to 
make me want to believe in Him. You have evidently 
wanted to believe in Him. You have tried so hard to do so 
that you have managed to deceive yourself into supposing 
that you do believe in Him. But are you happier for it? 
No, and a thousand times no, no, no! And the reason is 
that you don’t believe in Him.” 

“You forget that the God whom you find so unreasonable 
was according to my faith incarnate and revealed Himself 
as Love,” Mark observed. 

“Courtesy forbids me to argue that point,’ Mr. Fox re- 
plied. “To me the identification of Jesus Christ with the 
petulant, irrational, definitely disagreeable old patriarch of 
the Jews seems pathetically, even pitiably childish. But I 
should prefer not to argue it, because although people are 
prepared to listen to a certain amount of what they would 
consider blasphemy about God the Father their feelings are 
wounded by any of the same kind of criticism of God the 
Son. Which, of course, proves that they don’t really believe 
in God the Father and that they only believe in God the 
Son as they believed in Joe Chamberlain or as at the present 
moment they believe in Kitchener. Humanity itself defied 
Jesus Christ, which gives Him a much greater claim upon 
human loyalty. It’s really a manifestation of the paternal 


3204 The Heavenly Ladder 


instinct in man. We always look after our own from our 
bicycles to our divinities. Our politicians have cleverly 
exploited this paternal instinct in the prosecution of this 
war. It’s my war, everybody says to himself. The Italians, 
being the most realistic of European nations, are quite frank 
on this subject. ‘La nostra guerra, they say without a 
blush. ‘Our own little tin-pot war against Austria. What 
do we care about Europe?’ Soon, and I hope devoutly that 
it really will be soon, we shall discover that it wasn’t our 
war at all, and that the various ‘records’ we’ve broken in 
the way of deaths and mutilations, guns and gas and prodigal 
expenditure were not of our own seeking, but were forced 
upon us by the politicians, by secret diplomacy, and by I 
know not how many absurdities for which we are just as 
much responsible as for the war. Already there is a ten- 
dency for the young men to accuse the old men of having 
made the war. And popular sentiment is beginning to veer 
round from the point of view that the young men must go 
first into playing with the idea that the middle-aged are 
really the lads to kill. Well, they won’t kill me if from now 
until the end of the war I never spend more than a night 
under the same roof. With a celluloid collar and one spare 
flannel shirt of that peculiar tint of dirty grey, which is the 
choice of nearly all the really intelligent men I have met, I 
defy them.” 

“Do you mean that you'll really go on wandering about 
England to avoid being conscripted?’ Mark exclaimed. 
“But surely you’d only be substituting one tyranny for 
another ?”’ 

“T shouldn’t be forming fours,” said Mr. Fox. “Why 
should I, a man of thirty-seven, in possession of just enough 
money to allow himself to live frugally but well, to buy all 
the books worth reading that appear annually, to hear all the 
music and see all the plays worth hearing and seeing, to 
spend March and April round the Mediterranean, why 
should I be pitched into a life for which I am totally un- 
fitted? Why should I have to put up with the bullying of a 
ridiculous padded creature with a waxed moustache and a 


Impressionism 305 


Cockney accent merely because a number of incompetent 
amateurs of intrigue have involved me in this mess?” 

“Are you asking the question rhetorically, or do you 
expect me to supply you with an answer?” Mark inquired. 

“There is no answer,’ Mr. Fox went on. “Or at any 
rate there is no answer which would not imply that I was 
expected to do something for somebody else, and I refuse 
to accept that as a valid reason for forming fours. At least 
I am a frank individualist. I do withdraw openly from the 
herd. I do not pretend to hunt with the pack and spend my 
time trying to disable the two hounds on either side of me.” 

“But if you feel so confident of the impregnable strength 
of your moral position,” Mark pressed, “why do you bother 
to defend it so volubly? Why waste so much verbal powder 
and shot? I should be inclined to hazard that you are not 
quite so secure as you pretend to be. You seem to me to be 
trying all the time to convince yourself that all is well with 
you.” 

“The verb ‘to seem’ gives you away,” the other declared. 
“Impressionism, impressionism! There’s the malady of the 
age from which you’re suffering. Yes, we were taught at 
school to write our Latin prose as much like Cicero’s as 
possible, but we were forbidden his esse videatur. We were 
told that it was a bad trick of his. The instinct of the peda- 
gogue was right. There is something most damnably soft, 
flaccid, medullary, and gelatinous about “seems to be.’ One 
realizes why Cicero always chose the wrong side. Yes, it 
was esse videatur that brought him down finally at Caieta. 
But compared with us Cicero was an adamantine realist. 
We are all Hamlets nowadays, undecided about ourselves, 
undecided about everybody else, undecided what to think 
either about the universe or about God; and when we do 
make up our minds about anything, as, for instance, when 
we made up our minds to declare war on Germany, we find 
out soon afterwards that we decided wrong. And the fault 
is our impressionism. We have no standards of reality. A | 
bourgeois pragmatism is the philosophy we deserve, and 
we have got it.” 


306 The Heavenly Ladder 


He paused for a moment for breath, and Mark ventured 
to break in: 

“But a good deal of what you’re saying now is what I 
should say as a Catholic.” 

“But you’re not a Catholic,” said Mr. Fox, “except so far 
as your impressionism makes you seem to be one. Esse 
videatur! You will admit that I am, religiously speaking, a 
disinterested observer? Very well, I assure you that the 
claim of the High Church Anglicans to be Catholics strikes 
a disinterested observer as merely funny. I hate Catholi- 
cism, which I regard as nothing but an elaborate trap to en- 
snare the individual; but at least it is a well-made trap. The 
mechanism is perfect of its kind. Look at your present 
position in this vicarage, waiting to be turned out of it by a 
policeman. How can you possibly without a dose of im- 
pressionism strong enough to deprive you of your faculties. 
pretend that you or your Bishop or your Church have any 
kind of relation to Catholicism? It is impressionism in 
politics that has brought about this war. An entente cordiale 
instead of an alliance? Impressionism. An illusion that 
the interests of this country are bound up with those of 
France, Russia, and Italy? Impressionism. I could go on 
with the catalogue for a week, but I expect that like all the 
other Hamlets of to-day you’re more anxious to talk about 
yourself than listen to other people. What is the success of 
psycho-analysis over the staid old psychology? It en- 
courages people to talk about themselves. One way that the 
war might end will be that the intellectuals won’t be able 
to contain themselves much longer. They will simply have 
to visit Germany in order to be psycho-analysed. It is really 
a minor tragedy of the time that psycho-analysis is an enemy 
product, and for the moment a kind of intellectual contra- 
band. But what a debauch of it they will have after the war! 
Yet I could psycho-analyse all Bloomsbury now. They all 
suffer from an inferiority complex. Either they feel them- 
selves intellectually inferior to Newton or physicially in- 
ferior to Sandow or morally inferior to Christ, and since by 
their own standards of culture only the best contents them, 
they suffer acutely from their own deficiencies. Just as 


Impressionism 307 


Byron discovered swimming to be the noblest exercise be- 
cause it concealed his club-foot, so a Bloomsbury intellectual 
will admire Byzantine Art because he cannot be another 
Michelangelo. Why do you suppose that the Bloomsbury 
intellectual will object to being conscribed ?” 

“For the same reason as you, I suppose. He won’t like 
being taught to form fours.” 

“No, of course, he won’t like that,’ Mr. Fox agreed. 
“And if that were all he objected to, I should have no right 
to sneer at him. But the Bloomsbury intellectual will suffer 
more acutely than I, because he will be thinking not merely 
that the drill-sergeant is a fool, but also that the general is a 
fool. He will be thinking that he should be where the gen- 
eral is. That wouldn’t worry me. I take my stand simply 
on the fact that nobody has any right to claim authority 
over me. In a universe made utterly insecure for the un- 
mathematical mind by the higher mathematicians, I have 
been reduced to one solid fact of which they cannot deprive 
me. That solid fact is myself as long as I live. I decline to 
surrender it. I intend to cherish it and to guard it with 
solicitude and affection. Self! Glorious self! It is sweet 
and seemly to die for one’s country, but how much more 
sweet, how much more seemly, to live for one’s self.” 

“But the impressionism in me of which you complain,” 
Mark said, “what is that but the cultivation of self? Surely 
the discovery of ourselves has been the cause of this im- 
pressionism? Was there ever a greater impressionist than 
Rousseau ?” 

“Precisely. But Rousseau was only aware of himself im- 
pressionistically,” said Mr. Fox. ‘He was in love with his 
reflection, like Narcissus. He was interested in his image. 
And he has launched us on this intellectual Narcissism. 
Rousseau never knew himself, as, for instance, Nietzsche 
knew himself. Forgive me for recurring once again to the 
subject of your religion, but the mention of Nietzsche re- 
minds me of Wagner’s Parsifalism, and what is your re- 
ligion but Parsifalism? You are obsessed by redemptivist 
phantoms. In all that you have told me of your life here 
and elsewhere I perceive you the victim of an absurd idea 


308 The Heavenly Ladder 


that you have to save other people. Even your own God 
Jesus Christ made no attempt to do that. Of course, His 
disciples had to explain His ultimate failure, and so the 
legend of His dying to save the world was invented. But 
Christ’s own advice to others was to save themselves.” 

“T think you misunderstand what you call my redemptiv- 
ism,’ Mark said. “I regard myself as an automatic pur- 
veyor of Almighty God’s bounteous Grace by administrating 
His Sacraments. My saving of other people is on a par 
with the doctor’s. The doctor warns a man who comes to 
consult him that if he behaves in a certain way he will die. 
Meanwhile, in order to help him, he gives him medicine. I 
have the spiritual medicine for those who demand it. The 
whole trouble here is that the people won’t realize that they 
need any medicine.” 

“So that you’ve behaved,’ Mr. Fox retorted quickly, 
“like a doctor whom nobody consults and who finally, in des- 
peration, goes out into the street and forcibly pours his 
drugs down the throats of the passers-by. And yours is 
a particularly bad case, because you’re not really a qualified 
doctor. You hold no diploma from a recognized body.” 

“You mean to say that the Orders of the Anglican Church 
are invalid?” 

“Well, it would be absurd for me to argue about that,” 
Mr. Fox replied. “I might as well argue whether one bit 
of paste was a more genuine diamond than another bit of 
paste. You mean by the validity of Anglican orders that 
you claim to be able to work the magic as efficaciously as the 
genuine Catholics? Have you ever looked through the 
catalogues of the manufacturers of conjuring-tricks? ‘This 
is the real Indian rice-bowl trick,’ one will say. ‘No celluloid 
fakes, no conjurer’s wax, no invisible threads. All solid 
brass and only obtainable from me. Beware of cheaper 
imitations.’ Well, frankly, I believe your trick to be an 
imitation. It’s not good enough for the professional con- 
jurer. England is a nation of amateurs. It’s one of the 
things I like best about my country until we get into a mess 
such as we’re in at the present moment. Then I hate ama- 
teurs. I imagine that if I could take religion seriously I 


Impressionism 309 


should have the same kind of horror for amateur priests 
which, please forgive me, is the way I regard the ritualistic 
clergymen of the English Church. However, I cannot help 
thinking that you in your own heart thoroughly agree with 
me.” 

“T wonder why you think that,’ Mark said. 

“Well, there’s something honest and hard about you. 
Perhaps I’m falling a victim to the impressionism that I so 
much dislike and allowing my judgment to be influenced 
by your hospitality. But I don’t think so. Moreover, you 
have managed to consider yourself in spite of all temptations. 
You’ve enjoyed having your own way and you see no reason 
why you should let this ridiculous bishop play the drill- 
sergeant over you. Really, you and I are in much the same 
position. We're both trying to dodge what other people 
consider an obligation.” 

“I’m at such a disadvantage in my argument with you,” 
Mark said. “I always have to assume premisses which you 
will always refuse to accept. My behaviour must be judged 
on the postulate that I do believe in the Christian faith, 
which, furthermore, I believe to be identical with the Catho- 
lic religion. It would be foolish for me to try to explain to 
you why I am not a Roman Catholic. It would be an 
elaboration of the technicabilities of ecclesiastical govern- 
ment, of the minutiz of hierarchical claims.” 

“On the contrary,’ Mr. Fox said, “the weakness of your 
logical position is exposed by such a refusal. The funda- 
mental absurdity of a premiss does not affect the logic of the 
conclusion provided that the syllogism is not a false one. 
The premisses of Catholicism are unjustifiable, but the per- 
fection of the Catholic syllogism is unassailable. You object 
to compromise over the religion you preach and practise. 
That is illogical, because the English Church is erected upon 
a compromise. You claim that the English Church is an 
insular modification of the type comparable, let us say, to 
the lighter cream of the border round a native Camberwell 
Beauty compared with the continental form. I as a dis- 
interested critic do not recognize the English Church as a 
modification, but consider it an entirely distinct species. 


310 The Heavenly Ladder 


Compromise and inclusiveness if carried too far crystallize 
into something sui generis. Bowillabaisse and olla podrida 
have by now become characteristic dishes. Brass may be 
an alloy of copper, but its effect is of being a distinct metal.” 

“But the Apostolic Succession was not broken at the 
Reformation,’ Mark said. “That is the important point for 
us. We are really arguing at cross purposes. Indeed, I 
might carry the war into your camp and say that your esti- 
mate of the English Church is pure impressionism. Judged 
so, I admit that the English Church is a monster . . .” 

“Indeed, yes,” Mr. Fox interposed. “A sphinx with the 
head of Britannia and the body of the British lion.” 

“But that is merely the simulacrum. You recognize in 
the Roman Church the significant form which esthetics de- 
mand, and which indicates the reality that it clothes. The 
English Church, I admit, lacks any such significant form, 
but the reality is there. You don’t believe in the reality of 
either Church, and therefore, having only externals from 
which to form your opinion, you perceive the superficial 
absurdities and contradictions of the English Church and 
suppose that it really is absurd and contradictory.” 

“Like most Englishmen,’ Mr. Fox replied, “you think 
that what is only insular is actually mundane, even cosmic. 
The English are the most tolerant nation in the world. The 
English Church is designed to hold all, and there is no doubt 
whatever that the designers of the English Church intended 
it to take the place of the Catholic Church. It was ecclesias- 
tically the same kind of thing that Drake and the Elizabethan 
sea-dogs had been doing imperially. The idea that it was a 
privileged supplement to the Roman Catholic Church came 
much later. You get the same kind of anomaly as the 
English Church in the part England has played in this war. 
It begins with an entente cordiale supposed to have been 
brought about by King Edward VII, in which, contrary to 
the proverb, water is thicker than blood. It ends, or at any 
rate for the moment it has ended, in making us temporarily 
one of the nations of Europe. But in his heart no English- 
man really believes himself to be a European. As soon as 
peace is declared we shall want to withdraw from Europe 


Impressionism ain 


across the Channel once more. What is more typical than 
our attitude to Ireland? Ireland claims to be one of the 
European nations. We reply that she is one of the English 
nations. One of the reasons why I object to this war is 
that as an Englishman I shall resent belonging to a nation 
that is only one of the most powerful, for inevitably if 
Germany wins she will be our equal, and if France wins she 
will be our equal. America, merely by the exhaustion of the 
others, will be another equal. About Russia I have no opin- 
ion, but I suppose if we give her Constantinople she will be 
another equal. What will be the future of civilization with 
so many equal Powers? A pretty poor future until one 
nation is restored to the indubitable leadership.” 

“T don’t quite see how all this applies to the English 
Church,” Mark said. “You're still arguing about externals. 
The point I want to make is that we English priests believe 
that Apostolic Succession was not interrupted at the Refor- 
mation. We don’t believe in Papal Infallibility, because we 
weren’t consulted. Roman Catholics say that our orders are 
invalid because the Pope has condemned them. We say that 
the Pope is not infallible, because he has condemned our 
orders. I admit that my spiritual home is Rome, but I 
cannot believe that | am nota priest. And so I’m just hold- 
ing on somehow.” 

“A kind of ecclesiastical Micawber,” Mr. Fox laughed. 
“Well, we mustn’t argue any longer, for it’s not fair to stand 
on the bank and argue with a man in the water.” 

Three or four days after this conversation Mr. Horatio 
Fox told his host that he must be moving on. 

“But, my dear sir, why cut your visit short?” Mark said. 
“Please don’t think that I mind your criticisms of me and 
my religion. On the contrary, I have been thoroughly en- 
joying myself for the first time in getting on for two years 
now.” 

“Yes, but I’ve already outstayed my limit. It’s not that - 
I think my presence here will attract attention, but I’m afraid 
of getting too comfortable and then having suddenly to flit 
and take to the road again. Provided I keep on like the 


312 The Heavenly Ladder 


Wandering Jew, I may get used to it before the war is 
over.” 

“When do you think the war will be over?’ Mark asked. 

“The Great European Bore?” Mr. Fox replied pensively. 
“Well, I don’t see how it can last longer than another seven 
years. That would make it 1923. Then the peace will take 
two years—1925. And the results of the peace, say another 
twenty years. No, taking everything into consideration, I 
shouldn’t care to say that the war would be over before 1945, 
by which time we shall be ready for another. But I should 
be getting on for seventy, and my class would scarcely be 
called up before I had died a natural death.” 


CHAPTER IAALY 
THE BISHOP’S SUBSTANCE 


ARK missed Mr. Horatio Fox and his conversation 

when his visitor had walked out through the Vicarage 
gate with his little handbag to pursue his task of circum- 
ambulating the coast of Great Britain and avoiding the re- 
quirements of the Compulsory Service Act. He had begun 
at the easiest point by choosing Cornwall; but he would 
probably find a good deal of difficulty in surveying the East 
Coast at all thoroughly. However, he was wise to create 
for himself enough obstacles to prevent his being bored by 
the restless existence he had mapped out for himself until 
the end of the war. Mark rather envied Mr. Horatio Fox. 
It was strange that a sceptic like him should have wanted 
to argue about the Roman claims and the anomalous position 
of the Anglican Church. One might almost suspect him of 
being one of those dissatisfied unbelievers who were for ever 
harping on the pettinesses of rival creeds out of an instinct 
of self-preservation. Mark remembered that when Fox had 
first spoken to him on the subject he had adopted an attitude 
of utter indifference. But had not that indifference been 
an affectation? It was scarcely possible for any man to 
take such pleasure in arguing about something to which he 
really was indifferent. It was strange, too, that he should 
have been so anxious to press the claims of the Roman 
Church. Mark wondered if he was an apostate priest. When 
one looked back at his personality there had clung to it a 
kind of stale ecclesiastical aroma. His cheeks had had that 
typical priestly glaze. Old habits of thought might have 
proved too strong for him, and he might not have been able 
to resist pointing out the illogical position of an Anglican 
clergyman who held such beliefs as his host. Perhaps the 


313 


314 The Heavenly Ladder 


real reason why he had gone away so abruptly was the fear 
that if he stayed longer he should be tempted to talk about 
his own past. An apostate priest must always be haunted 
by the dread of his former faith returning to him. Mark 
could never remember that he had ever heard of an apostate 
priest from the Roman communion who was happy. Yet he 
had met at least two English priests who had renounced their 
priesthood and embarked upon professions, and who were 
to all appearances perfectly happy and prosperous. Why 
was that? Why could an English priest apostatize without 
regrets, but a Roman never? To be sure, most of the Ro- 
mans would have been led away by the flesh. Cherchez la 
femme was a safe explanation in the great majority of 
apostasies. English priests often did renounce their orders 
simply because they ceased to believe. They were not bound 
to celibacy and had less temptation and no necessity to 
forsake God on a woman’s account. But might there not 
be another explanation? Might not... Mark thrust the 
question of the validity of English Orders away from him. 
He had not gone through all he had to be shaken now by 
the arguments of an apostate priest. 

Nevertheless, the personality of Mr. Horatio Fox hung 
about the Vicarage when he had gone like the smell of a 
strong cigar. It was almost as if he still sat there talking 
and arguing continuously; and so much was he still there 
that Mark found himself arguing aloud in the silence with 
his ghostly opponent, and waiting for the empty space in 
the chair to respond. 

The March wind boomed round the house, moaned along 
the empty corridors and went sighing in and out of the 
empty rooms. Surely, surely something would happen soon 
to end this futile waiting about for a martyrdom that never 
came. 

“What would you do if you were in my place?” he asked 
of the empty space in the chair. “You were so very in- 
sistent on the duty one owes to oneself, Fox. What duty do 
I owe myself? It’s a strange and sad thing, but only too 
horribly true, that I have not been able to pray since Christ- 
mas Day. Mass every morning at Chypie no longer means 


The Bishop’s Substance 315 


anything. That fat fellow Kennedy consecrates without 
convincing me. It was all right so long as I said Mass 
myself; I had no doubts then, Fox. I had no doubts at all. 
But since I’ve had to give up saying Mass, for even I can’t 
pretend that I should be within my rights to say Mass here 
in the Vicarage while old Cobweb, as Kennedy calls him, is 
saying Mass in the church, yes, ever since I’ve given up 
saying Mass myself I have begun to doubt. Don’t think that 
you shook me, Fox, with your ridiculously superficial criti- 
cism. You had no effect on me whatever. I was shaken 
before I ever met you.” 

The wind rattled all the panes as Mark avowed this, and 
simultaneously there was a loud pealing of the front-door 
bell. 

“T shall begin to think in a moment that Fox is Satan 
and that I have successfully conjured him to appear.” 

The bell pealed again even more loudly and more urgently 
than before. 

Mark looked at his watch. 

“Eight o’clock. It’s not a Prawle. Miss Horton? She’d 
scarcely dare to come after my telegram. Fox? He wouldn’t 
ring like that. The police at last? But they wouldn’t come 
at this hour.” 

The bell pealed again. Mark threw back the curtains and 
looked out. 

“Tt’s black enough. I wonder if I’d better open the door? 
It might be a trick.” 

While he was hesitating he heard the tap of agitated 
fingers upon the panes, and, holding the lamp so that it 
illuminated the faces of the tappers, he saw Donald Evans 
and Arthur Tangye signalling to him from the darkness 
outside. 

Mark hurried round to the front door to admit them. 

“We've got some news for ’ee,” Donald panted on the 
threshold. | 

“We've run all the way from Nancepean to tell ’ee, and 
it was some hard work running through the dark like we 
belonged,” Arthur gasped. 


316 The Heavenly Ladder 


“Come in, come in, both of you, and tell me why you’ve 
run all the way like this. Is somebody dying in the village ?” 

Both boys shook their heads and followed Mark into his 
study. Donald was white with the exertion he had made, 
Arthur red as a raspberry. 

“You tell how we ran like we have, boy Arthur,” Donald 
said. “I couldn’t say not a word because I’m so breathed, 
and oh, dear, ’tis blowing some. Wait while I rest myself a 
minute and I’ll be all right again. Go on, boy Arthur, tell 
why we’ve come.” 

Thus adjured, Arthur began one of his long chanted nar- 
ratives, the manner of which had not changed in the least 
since Mark last heard one of them, and the intonations of 
which, heard once more after supposing for so long that 
he should never hear them again, moved him like an old 
tune that has been loved and lost and found. 

“Boy Donald was looking for a thruppenny-piece he left 
drop this morning, and he was looking for it on the ground 
near Roscorla gate, because he thought perhaps he might 
have left it drop near there because he belonged pegging 
tops there with Charlie Woods this morning, and he said 
he weren’t sure but perraps it jomped out of his pocket 
when he pegged, and when he was looking up and down, up 
and down, and couldn’t never see the shine of his thrup- 
penny-piece nowhere, there come a great parcel of wind, and 
blowed his lantern out, and he was all in the dark, and he 
hadn’t got no matches nor nothing, and he said to himself, 
how wouldn’t I go across Roscorla town-place and knock to 
the door and ask Mrs. Clemmow to give ’un a box of 
matches, and when he come near to the door he heard a 
sound go thomp-thomp, thomp-thomp, and ’twere old Miss 
Lassiter as was come thomping to ask Mrs. Clemmow some- 
thing, and boy Donald was skeered so as he didn’t knaw 
where to run and hide himself he was so skeered.”’ 

“My gosh, I was some skeered,” Donald corroborated. 

“He was skeered,’” Arthur continued, ‘because Miss Las- 
siter belongs to be an old witch, and when she come thomp- 
ing along in the dark he was skeered to cross her path be- 


The Bishop’s Substance 317 


cause she might have turned ’un into a Johnny Jakes and 
squashed ’un underneath her foot.” 

“But why should Donald be afraid of being turned into a 
snail particularly?’ Mark asked. 

“Because the other day I put a Johnny Jakes on her 
window when it were wet,’ Donald explained. “And it 
made a squeaking like a Johnny Jakes belongs to make 
crawling on a window, and she come out of her door and 
shook her stick at me and said, ‘I'll pay you out for mucking 
up my clean window, Donald Evans.’ ”’ 

“So that was how boy Donald was skeered Miss Lassiter 
might turn ’un into a Johnny Jakes and squash ’un under- 
neath her foot,’ Arthur resumed. “And so when he heard 
her come thomp-thomp to talk to Mrs. Clemmow he jomped 
back and hid behind the barn door till she were gone in, 
and he thought he wouldn’t look no more for his thruppenny- 
piece that night, but get up early before school and look for 
it again in the morning. And when Miss Lassiter were gone 
inside to talk wi’ Mrs. Clemmow and he were just going to 
run back home so fast as he could, he heard a great sound of 
voices coming in along, and at first he thought it was devils 
come all the way up along from hell to take old Miss Lassiter 
down along with them to where they come from, and he 
jomped back again and hid hisself behind the barn door. 
But after a minute he found it wasn’t no such a thing as 
devils at all. It were Mr. Stithian of Pentine and old Mr. 
Dale of Tallack and John Joseph Dunstan of Praa and 
Harry Dunstan and Bob Dunstan come down along from 
Polgarth, but Mr. Dunstan himself weren’t come. But Mr. 
Martin of Nankervis were come, and some he couldn’t be 
sure who they was, and when they was all come into the 
town-place Mr. Jago come out from the front door wi’ 
Mrs. Clemmow and Miss Lassiter and George Pellow and 
Tom Pascoe and old Mr. Pascoe and Charlie Woodses’ 
father and I don’t knaw how many more, and they all be- 
longed talking to once, and boy Donald couldn’t understand 
what they belonged talking about, and then he heerd your 
name.” 

“My name?” Mark echoed. 


318 The Heavenly Ladder 


“Yes, I heerd Mr. Stithian say, ‘If I’d my way I'd throw 
the over the cliff.’’’ Donald cried, leaping to his feet, 
his eyes on fire with excitement. ‘‘ “Yes, and so would I,’ Mr. 
Jago shouted. ‘And ’twould be just what he do deserve,’ 
old Miss Lassiter said. ‘’I would be too good for such as 
he,’ Tom Pascoe said. And then old Mr. Dale of Tallack 
said: ‘I won’t have nothing to do with it if vi’lence is used. 
Turn the man out wi’ his furniture ’tis one thing, throw 
him over the cliff ’tis another, and I for one say “no” to any 
such a thing.’ And Mr. Martin of Nankervis he said the 
same as Mr. Dale, and so did George Pellow and the Dun- 
stan boys, and all of em except Mr. Jago and Mr. Stithian 
and Tom Pascoe. But when I heerd them all talking so 
wild I didn’t know what to do, for I was skeered for ’ee, Mr. 
Lidderdale, and didn’t want for they should hurt ’ee, and 
there was a lomp to my throat and I thought I belonged 
fading away.. And then somebody said: ‘Be Bert Prawle 
going to put the horses to the waggon?’ And Mr. Jago 
spitted on the ground, and said: ‘No, darn ’ee, I can put 
the horses to the waggon myself, and when Bert belongs to 
go up along to the Vicarage to-morrow for his crouse there 
won't be nothing to eat, and I don’t reckon the Reverend 
Dowling ’Il make Bert his churchwarden.’ But when I 
heard Mr. Jago say that, I knew they was coming soon to do 
something to ’ee, and I run across the town-place and out 
of the gate. And some did shout, ‘Hi! who’s that run- 
ning?’ But I didn’t stop till I come to Arthur’s house, and 
Mrs. Tangye wasn’t there, and I said: ‘Who'll run with me 
so fast as they can to the Vicarage, and tell Mr. Lidderdale 
they’re coming to do something against him?” 

“And I said, ‘T’ll come with ’ee, boy Donald,’” Arthur 
broke in, “ “because I belonged to go once to the Vicarage 
with maid Susie when Mr. Stithian belonged shooting Miss 
Horton’s dog, and ’twere dark and blowing like ’tis to-night. 
T’ll come with ’ee,’ I said. And I couldn’t find my cap no- 
where at all, and I come without it, and when we run past 
Roscorla we heard the stamping of the horses and Mr. 
Jago call, ‘Whoa! Steady! Get back! and so we knawed 





The Bishop’s Substance 319 


they was coming quick behind us, and we run faster and 
faster.”’ 

“Hark listen!” Donald cried. “I can hear something!” 

All three listened. Yes, above the booming of the wind 
there was the sound of wheels. 

“They're coming. They’re coming,” Arthur proclaimed. 
“My gosh, I wish I had a German cannon so as I could 
shoot them all to pieces.” 

“Oh, Mr. Lidderdale!” Donald cried, bursting into a 
flood of tears and seizing Mark’s hand. ‘I couldn’t bear for 
‘ee to be hurt. I wish I hadn’t gone out that day you come 
last to see mother. And mother did wish ’ee well. Only 
she said you was so contrary the way you belonged going on. 
Hark listen, the waggon is coming nearer!” 

“T belonged to wish ’ee well too, Mr. Lidderdale,” Arthur 
chanted. “I wanted for ’ee to say, ‘How don’t ’ee come 
down church now, Arthur?’ Only you never said nothing. 
If you’d said something I’d have come the same as I always 
belonged, and if my mother told me to go chapel I wouldn’t 
have gone to the dirty old chapel.” 

“Donald and Arthur,” Mark said hurriedly, “I shall never 
forget all my life what you have done for me to-night. If 
I tried to tell you, you would not understand. You have 
saved me from something much worse than anything Mr. 
Jago and the rest of them can do. Donald, give your mother 
my love, and ask her to forgive me for anything I have 
said or done to hurt her. Don’t be shy to say that. Don’t 
just mumble a message so that she doesn’t understand. Say 
just what I’ve said. You won’t forget? Thank God you’re 
both too young to be taken in this war, and so one day I 
hope I shall see you again. I’ve no time to say anything 
more now except to thank your brave little hearts. Donald, 
don’t give up going to Mass, and ask your mother if you 
can’t take Arthur up to Chypie with you, and ask Mrs. 
Tangye if she won’t let him go. And now listen. I don’t 
want you to be found here when these men come to do what- 
ever they’re going to do. Listen, I can hear the wheels of 
the waggon in the drive already. Go out by the kitchen door 
and hurry back home as fast as you can. Your mother will 


320 The Heavenly Ladder 


be fretting to know where you are, Donald, and Arthur too, 
it’s time you were in bed. God bless you both; I think that, 
like Tobit, an angel must have brought you to me.” 

“Like Toby Prawle?” Arthur chanted in some bewilder- 
ment. 

“No, no, like Tobit. I told you the story once in Sunday- 
school.” 

“T remember,” Donald said. 

“Remind Arthur of it on the way home. And now run.” 

“But what are they going to do to ’ee, Mr. Lidderdale ?” 
both boys wailed. 

“Nothing serious. I’m sure of that. But I’d rather you 
weren’t here when they come. Listen, the waggon has 
stopped outside.” 

There was a thunder of fists on the front door. 

“TI won’t leave ’ee alone,” Donald declared. “Boy Arthur, 
you won’t go no more than me, will ’ee?” 

“If you belong to stay, boy Donald, I'll belong to stay 
with ’ee.” 

“No, no, children, I want you to go,’ Mark begged. 
“They'll do nothing to me.” 

There was another thunder of fists on the door. 

“They might if we wasn’t here to tell of ‘em. If boy 
Arthur and me stops beside ’ee, they won’t dare to touch ’ee 
because we’d belong to tell the policeman what they done,” 
Donald insisted. “’Tis no use for ’ee to tell us to go, be- 
cause we won't go. Boy Arthur, look see what you’ve done.” 

“T can’t help it,’ said Arthur, blushing with embarrass- 
ment. “When I belong to be in a tremble like I am now I 
can’t help it. ’Tisn’t because I’m skeered. ’Tis another 
kind of a tremble inside of me. *Iwere like when we was 
racing to the Band of Hope tea and waiting for the pistol 
to fire ‘go.’ I did it then, and I weren’t skeered no more 
than I am now.” 

A voice outside the window shouted. 

“You may so well open the door and be done with it, Par- 
son. We’re coming in if we have to break down the door.” 

“It’s better to let them in,’ Mark said half to himself, half 


The Bishop’s Substance 321 


to the boys, as he went out into the front passage to open 
the door. 

The wind was rushing past in the darkness like a train. 

“We've come to move ’ee, Parson,” announced one. 

Immediately the passage was filled with sullen figures who 
began to carry out the furniture and stack it in the waggon. 

Mark went back into his study, where during his absence 
the boys had armed themselves, Donald with the poker, 
Arthur with the tongs. Fred Stithian and Tom Pascoe 
followed Mark, and when he saw the boys Stithian gave a 
huge guffaw. 

“By gosh, Tom, if we haven’t caught the ,’ he swore. 

“Stithian,” Mark said, “I thrashed you once. If you say 
another word, I’ll thrash you again.” 

The farmer made a threatening move forward. 

“Mr. Stithian,’ Donald cried, raising his poker. 

“Mr. Stithian,” Arthur echoed shrilly, opening the tongs 
like another St. Dunstan. 

“Mr. Stithian,” said Donald, “if you dare touch Mr. Lid- 
derdale Ill tell my father of ’ee, and if you touch me I’d be 
sorry for ’ee when my father gets ’ee.” 

“Quiet, Donald, quiet,’ Mark said. “Who’s the leader 
of this party, Stithian, you or Jago? Who?” 

Old Sam Dale of Tallack came in at this moment. 

“We're sorry to behave like this, Mr. Lidderdale, but the 
people of Nancepean think ’tis time you were gone from 
amongst them. Your furniture will be taken where you 
want it taken; but you mustn’t come back no more to the 
Vicarage.” 

“You can take my furniture to Penelope Prawle’s cot- 
tage,” Mark said. “Come along, boys, we don’t want to 
stay here. Throw away that poker, Donald.” 

Mark was really anxious to get the boys away before 
Stithian or Jago or Tom Pascoe said something to make him 
lose his temper. He told them to wait for him downstairs 
while he packed a few things in a handbag. Then he wrote 
a brief note to Mrs. Evans, explaining what had happened 
and asking her to accept his books for Donald, and to see 
that the furniture was divided between the Prawles and the 





322 The Heavenly Ladder 


Tangyes. The few pictures he had he asked her to keep 
for herself. Then he came downstairs and bade the boys 
come along. 

“We'll go back by Church Cove,” he told them. 

The wind was blowing with hurricane force along the 
valley ; but luckily it was at their backs, though even so the 
noise was too great to allow any conversation. 

When they reached the churchyard gate, Mark asked 
them if they minded going home by themselves. 

“But where are you going?” Donald asked. 

“T’m going to Rosemarket. I shall take the road up the 
towans,” he replied. “Give this note to your mother and 
the message I told you. God bless you both, brave and true 
little hearts. I shall never forget what you’ve done for me. 
Run, run. They’ll be getting anxious about you at home.” 

He stooped and kissed them. Through a gash in the 
stormy clouds the starlight showed him his church for a brief 
space. Then the gash closed up, and the church became one 
again with the cliff. The boys were already out of sight. 
Mark turned his face to the wind and struggled on into the 
darkness, from which he would emerge only to be lost under 
another name in the deeper murk and utter darkness of 
war. 


CHAPTER XXV 
DE PROFUNDIS 


ULTITUDES of dappled green fish with diminutive 
gaping mouths and lidless eyes like gooseberries swam 
round Mark in cold stupidity. It was strange how easy it 
was to breathe the water, strange and rather pleasant, like 
nibbling candied angelica. If only it would not roar like this 
in his ears, he might be able to hear what these fish thought 
about him. Somebody had lowered a golden chain to haul 
him out of these dinosaurian immensities of depth, from 
these waters under the earth, from these noseless, noiseless 
fish... . Ah, agony, the golden chain held a barbed hook 
which he had swallowed. A voice cried, “Thou art thyself 
a faithless pisciculus and I Tertullian.” Ah, agony of 
agonies, the water was thick and sticky as the juice of 
crystallized limes. 

“If I am a fish, Thou art a fish, THEOTD XPIZ TOD 
OEOT TIOZ ZOQTHP,” he cried. 

“Forgive me, Divine Acrostic, and take this hook from 
my throat, and turn these waters to air. IXOT2 IXOT2,” 
he cried again. 

A surging darkness took the place of the emeraldine 
waters, and soon of the surging darkness a silent darkness, 
so silent and so dark that the pain of the hook blared like a 
trumpet and shone like brass. Then immortality was not a 
lie and pain endured after death and this was the Last Day. 
It was too dark to perceive the decillions of other souls being 
drawn upward like this, each a point of pain, hearing 
through pain, seeing through pain, and ah, smelling through 
pain this illimitable stench of corruption all around. 

Mark opened his eyes to the whisper of rain drops and 
saw above him the endless monotone of a dripping dawn. 
Now that he was no longer being drawn upwards, the pain 


323 


324 The Heavenly Ladder 


was less, or perhaps not really less but diffused about his 
body and for the moment half quiescent. A great weight lay 
over him almost as far as his neck; but he could still move 
his head, and turning it to the right he found himelf staring 
at the black oozy face of a corpse, a face of which the 
profile had already decayed so that it resembled a coconut. 
He turned his head to the left and looking downward saw 
that he was lying on the edge of a chute of mud, the bottom 
of which was invisible from his position. Had he climbed 
up this chute out of the mud and water at the bottom and 
fainted when he reached the comparative security of the 
top? What had happened? He turned to the right again 
and contemplated the black face of the corpse. That must 
have been dead a long time. That must have been buried 
once and then torn from its grave again by something. By 
what? If he could know what had dragged that corpse 
from the mud he should know why he was lying here. 
Those fish, of course, were a dream. ‘Those fish were not 
real, and all that nonsense about Tertullian was part of the 
dream, And the fancy that he was being dragged up by a 
hook, that was part of the dream too. But the pain of the 
hook, that was real enough. Ah, yes, ah... indeed that 
was real enough ... too real... it was tearing him to 
pieces ... lacerating . . . one realized now what Prome- 
theus suffered from that eagle’s beak... tearing .. - 
lacerating . . . ah, it would have been so much better to die 
as he thought he had died than to lie here and be tortured 
like this. . . . Great God, how did the early martyrs survive 
their torments? One read of agonies that must have been 
as violent as these that he was suffering now; but they would 
not deny their Faith. How had they endured? How? 
How? Again it was coming. Ah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no 
more! Yet, they would not deny their Saviour. How 
did they hold out, if they suffered like this? And they must 
have suffered worse, because they would have seen the in- 
struments of torture. That would have added to the pain. 
Again it was coming, ah, the worst of allso far . . . rending, 
carding, shattering, racking, excruciating, convulsing pain! 
And so much the worse, because, ah, he was entirely buried 


De Profundis 325 


except for his head. The earth which had been taken from 
that coconut-faced, stinking, black, oozy corpse had covered 
his living body. Was he lying, or standing, or twisted in 
some damnable arabesque beneath this weight of earth? You 
don't hear the shell that gets you. But the shell had not got 
him. So he ought to have heard it. Hear? Everything was 
horribly quiet. Was he stone deaf? He would try the 
effect of shouting at the top of his voice. Mark made a 
tremendous effort ; but it was easier to shout in a nightmare 
than it was now. Only a queer strangled moan as the re- 
sult of all that will to make a noise. Was it that he could not 
hear himself shout or was it that he had lost the ability to 
make a noise? What fad happened to him? Had every- 
thing been shot away except his head? Was that legend true 
about the head of Charles the First winking at its execu- 
tioner? But if he was only a head, should he be able to 
feel all this pain? Why not? He had often been told 
that one still felt the pain of an amputated leg. But if he 
was only a head he should not be able to move it. He could 
turn it to the right and stare at that black-faced corpse, and 
he could turn it to the left and see that chute of slimy mud. 
That was doing much more than Charles the First’s de- 
capitated head had done by winking, even if it ever had 
winked, which was doubtful. Ah, here was the pain again 
to let him know that he still had a body, yes, here was the 
pain to fork that body with white-hot prongs, to stab it with 
a serrated dagger, to thrust in a demon’s hand and pull out 
the nerves like strands of elastic and let them flap back into 
a tangle of writhing worms. It was a pain beyond tears or 
shrieks of anguish. It was a pain that made a catherine- - 
wheel of all normal expression and spun the sufferer into an 
orbit of more acute feeling where he had to begin again with 
laughter, a laughter that had nothing to do with mirth, but 
that expressed an agony beyond the capacity of tears or 
groans. If the pain lasted much longer he should pass be- 
yond the capacity of expressing it at all outwardly, and it 
would rend him in silence until it rent his personality asun- 
der. 

“In other words, I shall faint,” Mark thought. “And re- 


326 The Heavenly Ladder 


turn to those gooseberry-eyed fish, until I am hooked up 
again into consciousness and able to suffer some more.” 

How had the martyrs kept steadfast? How had they been 
able to endure the prospect of torture added to torture until 
death released them? 

“Why, I would deny God now if by denying Him I could 
ward off one more spasm. No, I wouldn’t! I would deny 
myself! That was how the martyrs endured. They denied 
themselves.” 

The pain came swooping down again, and Mark gave it 
all his self. 

“For it is right that you should suffer through your body, 
self, and perhaps in suffering you will learn that God is 
and does not seem to be. Look back, vile self! That was a 
deep stab, eh, but don’t you deserve a deeper? Never mind 
about the pain for a moment. Just look back to that Sunday 
in the woods of Meade Cantorum when you saw that you 
were ugly. Do you remember what the Rector said to you? 

If in the future you are tempted to doubt the wisdom 
of Almighty God, remember what was vouchsafed to you 
at a moment when you seemed to have no reason for any 
longer existing, so black was your world. Remember how 
you caught sight of yourself in that pool and shrank away in 
horror from. the vision. ... We are all as ugly as the de- 
mons of Hell if we are allowed to see ourselves as we really 
are. But God only grants that to a few spirits whom He 
consecrates to His service and whom He fortifies afterwards 
by proving to them that, no matter how great the horror of 
their self-recognition, the Holy Ghost is within them to 
comfort them. 

“And what have you done, vile self? I was granted the 
knowledge of your hideousness, but I paid heed to the hide- 
ousness of others. My life has been a glorification of you. 
It was always what I believed about you, what I hoped for 
you, what I loved in you. It was your futility that worried 
me. It was your pride that was wounded by the suspicions 
of Nancepean. You pretended to love God and allowed 
me to love you. I rejoice now that I have flung you aside 
to be rent and twisted and racked by pain. I rejoice, do you 


De Profundis 327 


hear, vile self? I enjoy your pain. I revel in it. And 
don’t think that I am confusing you with the material part 
of me. Oh, no, no, no. I am not indulging myself in any 
distinctions between matter and spirit. 

“At last I understand: 

If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself 
and take up lus Cross daily, and follow Me. 

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whoso- 
ever will lose his life for My sake, the same shall save it.” 

The agony turned to a dull diffused ache that was almost 
pleasurable. The fiery thirst which had begun to assail him 
was quenched by a torrent of ambrosial rain. A dimness 
overcame him from which he was roused by the fancy 
that the nerves of his legs were being played upon like 
stringed instruments. In his thigh a ground bass of violas 
and violoncellos, on the hamstrings an infernal pizzicato, 
and all the nerves and tendons below swept by the cold high 
notes of violins. He even fancied that he could trace a 
kind of melody in these subtle vibrations which if written 
down would appear like the arboreal patterns with which 
worms have adorned the pages of ancient books. Then the 
playing ceased. A hemlock chill crept up his legs, or rather 
coiled round them in ascending spirals of iciness like a con- 
strictor snake. 

“This will reach my heart,” he thought. “And then I shall 
die.” 

Somewhere from the past—was it yesterday or years ago? 
—a picture came back of advancing across the open and of 
an Irish priest, who had not secured a man’s confession be- 
fore he went over the top, running along beside him and 
shouting as he ran: 

“Will you not be after wasting any more precious time, 
Mickey O’Dea? You're a fool, and you will be a damnéd 
fool if you make me run the good breath out of my body 
and you with a bullet through your head before I can give 
you absolution for all your sins. And me come all this way 
for a soul who'll be in Hell before the counter-attack. Say 
it after me. I confess to Almighty God... that’s grand 

. and to Blessed Mary ever Virgin . .. and to you, 


328 The Heavenly Ladder 


father . . . by thought, word, and deed . .. you’re doing 
UTAUCiar veer 

And just as the priest had given him absolution Mickey 
©’Dea had been killed. 

“Did you ever see such luck now?” the priest had called 
out. “The bullet came as pat as an amen.” 

Had that happened yesterday or a year ago? 

Not yesterday. But had there ever been a yesterday, or 
had it gone up with the rest? 

The drowsiness returned. He was marching with his 
battalion. Marching, marching, marching, marching, and 
thirsty, thirsty, as if a horse’s nosebag had been tied over his 
head. Dusty-thirsty, dusty-thirsty, dusty-thirsty. Yet every- 
body round him was laughing. 


For my breakfast I likes a bit of bread and cheese 
And a narf a pint of a-ill, 

For my dinner I likes a bit of bread and cheese 
And a narf a pint of a-ill, 

For my tea I likes a bit of bread and cheese 

And a narf a pint of a-ill, 

And for my supper I likes a bit of bread and cheese 
And a GALLON AND A NARF OF A-ILL. 


OTH 

“Wa ch,’ ’rry ?” 

“The nex awmy I joins ‘Il be the Selvation —— 
awmy, mate, and don’t chew ferget it!’ 

(aw Tiwma se: 

Dusty-thirsty. Dusty-thirsty. Dusty-thirsty. 

“Bill, why don’t Chelsea out that lef’ back? Caw! I 
never see such a silly in my life. It fair give me the 
sick to watch him.” 

Nay ign tytn 

“Not arf I ain’t. What jew think?” 


Dusty-thirsty. Dusty-thirsty. Dusty-thirsty. 








We are Fred Karno’s Army... 
Have a banana! 


De Profundis 329 


“Ere, when are they going to give us a ’alt ?” 


The bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling 
But not for you and me. 

O Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling? 
O Grave, thy victoree? 


“An’ he ups and calls me a barstid. An’ I says, ‘’Ere,’ I 
says, ‘who are you well callin a barstid?’ I says, an’ I 
up an’ ’it im on the ’ead with the shovel, I did. Yersse, 
an’ got field punishment. Nice thing if any can 
up and call anyone a barstid an’ no one can’t do nothing just 
becaws there’s a war !”’ 

Dusty-thirsty. Dusty-thirsty. Dusty-thirsty. 

Tea! Black, strong, smoky tea. And sweet tinned milk. 
Tea! 

It would be sad not to see any of them again. They would 
probably be making tea now. They always were making tea 
except when they were fighting or asleep or dead. And 
how lovable, sitting round their kettles. Yes, it would be 
sad not to see any of them again. They were like the dande- 
lions in the dusty London parks. 

Dusty-thirsty. Dusty-thirsty. Dusty-thirsty. 

“Want some water, mate? Wait a bit. You could do 
with digging out. If we hadn’t of heard you singing, we 
never wouldn’t have seen you.” 

“You see that black thing by me with a face like a 
coconut?” Mark asked. 

“Seen quite enough like that,” said the stretcher-bearer. 

“No, not quite like that,’ Mark said earnestly. ‘“That’s 
my dead self. Rotten, isn’t it?” 

“That’s all right, mate. Drink a bit more water.” 

“You don’t believe me,” Mark persisted. 

“Yersse, I believe you. What makes you think I don’t 
believe you?” 

“Don’t bother to pick it up,” Mark said. 

“No, we won’t bother much about it. And don’t you 
bother about it neither. Now then, Nobby, steady, get him 
on slow.” 

Rain-pain. Rain-pain. Rain-pain. MRain-rain-rain. ... 

















CHAPTER XXVI 
THE HEAVENLY LADDER 


ARK SMITH, emerging from the fog of war, was in 

| due course demobilized, which left Mark Lidderdale 
free to devote all his attention to the problem of his future. 
He was like a man who has suffered a concussion and who, 
after remaining for a long time unconscious, is trying to re- 
capture the continuity of his existence. Either he could start 
an entirely new life from this point or he could go back and 
try to pick it up from where he left it off that last night in 
Nancepean. Many apparently insoluble puzzles are solved 
by the need of earning one’s livelihood. Mark was on the 
point of resuming his clerical attire and looking out for a 
curacy when Drogo Mortemer, the Vicar of St. Cyprian’s, 
South Kensington, died, and by leaving him £250 a year 
prevented his being compelled by necessity to make an imme- 
diate decision. He had lived through those critical years 
that signalize the climax of a man’s development from with- 
out; and now, in the month of May, a week or so after his 
thirty-eighth birthday, he grasped that he had to confront 
what was a considerably more complicated problem than was 
involved in deciding whether his experience during the war 
had been a temporary suspension of his normal consciousness 
or a complete annihilation of all that had gone before. For 
when he began to consider the life of a man he apprehended 
that, while it would destroy its unity to substitute for that 
unity diversity, it would be equally destructive of that unity 
not to include its diversity. He had to find a way to recon- 
cile unity with diversity in his own life so that it would 
present unity in diversity and diversity in unity. The life 
of a man regarded from one angle was a series of successive 
steps from childhood to youth, from youth to maturity, from 
maturity to middle-age, from middle-age to age, from age to 


330 


The Heavenly Ladder 331 


old age; regarded from another angle it was a circle through 
childhood through youth through age through youth through 
childhood. But when the life of a man was not regarded 
from an angle, it was a totum simul, the successive or cyclic 
appearance of which was merely the frame of its temporal 
or spatial significance in eternity. 

“Therefore,” Mark thought, “I have to discover what to 
be with what I have done and what to do with what I have 
been, because whatever I shall do will be what I am at this 
moment and whatever I shall be will be what Ido now? A 
fourth dimensional tense might express more clearly what I 
mean, and if there were such a tense it would incorporate the 
Present Indicative within the Future Perfect. The Future 
Perfect is so much the most subtle tense we have. The 
psychological necessity that invented it must have marked 
an era in human thought. Yet its very subtlety is its weak- 
ness. It is too anthropomorphic, too spatial, too temporal. 
God always speaks with the Present Indicative. Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. It was 
that Indicative which made the Jews pick up stones to fling 
at Him.” 

Mark chose a village in the Bernese Oberland in which to 
make his interior peace while the nations were making their 
exterior peace at Versailles. The name of the village does 
not matter, for he neither wrote letters thence nor received 
them there. It is never possible to escape entirely from tour- 
ists anywhere at any time in Switzerland; but this village 
was during May nearly free from them, and the few that 
visited the small hotel usually passed on the next day to more 
renowned achievements of scenery. 

On these high Alpine pastures nature offered for Mark’s 
contemplation a perfect unity in the diversity of earth, air, 
and water. The human mind upon the ocean, the human 
mind in the air, the human mind on the central plains of 
continents is often afflicted by a discontent that would be 
assuaged immediately by landfall or landing or view of the 
sea. Mark found that in these mountains he did not pine for 
the air, because earth at such heights partook of airiness; 
nor did he languish for the sea, because the waterfalls and 


3R2 The Heavenly Ladder 


snow and grey torrents supplied its equivalent. The snow, 
too, was not merely the equivalent of the ocean, but the 
equivalent of the clouds also; while the sky beyond the 
peaks presented itself half as sky, half as sea. All these 
three elements were fused; each interpenetrated and per- 
vaded the other ; yet each was perfectly itself ; while the unity 
was not merely immanent in the diversity, but at certain 
times was seen to transcend it. The fourth element, fire, 
when it excluded the others, had been used by humanity to 
express the pangs of remorse, the punishment of sin, the 
abandonment of hope, and all ultimately unimaginable and 
incommunicable pain; but it had also been used to express 
the greatest good when it played its appropriate part with the 
other elements. And surely nowhere might the sun display 
his beauty so marvellously as over these mountains and 
surely nowhere was his beneficence so gloriously apparent. 

This unity in diversity declared itself more intimately 
than by this interpenetration of the elements one of another 
in their suffusion of the flowers, the birds, and the butter- 
flies. The alpine-roses that shed such a warmth of earthy 
crimson along the track above the glacier, the mauve violas 
blossoming from the half-melted snow very near to the limit 
of its perpetuity far up the Jungfrau, the lilies of St. Bruno 
that brought the snow from the peaks to the lush valleys 
painted with flowers of every hue, all these were something 
more than flowers in their unity, but perfect flowers in their 
diversity. The birds, too, never appeared to escape from 
earth into air, so rarely were they seen against the sky; and 
yet so luminous was the earth they haunted that they might 
have been bright and rapid fish darting about in a magically 
transparent water. The slim cascades quivering and sway- 
ing like silver birches against the dark ravines were as much 
trees as waterfalls, and the trees themselves had the prodi- 
gality of tumbling water. The torrents and the stones over 
which they plunged were one, so that now the observer was 
dazed by the restless urgency of the stream and a moment 
afterward bewitched by the perception of it as a motionless 
quilt of grey velvet. The frequent tinkling of the cowbells 
was the very voice of the ice; and when a herdsman blew his 


The Heavenly Ladder 333 


horn the mountains echoed back the sound from themselves 
in an exquisite and attenuated music that melted into silence 
as softly as the snow. But perhaps it was the butterfly, 
Parnassius Apollo, with diaphanous wings of ice, snow- 
powdered and dappled with vivid patches of red and blue 
flowers, that summed up in itself and expressed most per- 
fectly the Alpine scene. 

Yet while Mark rejoiced in this radiant unity and glorious 
diversity, he was filled with a melancholy. This emotion had 
nothing in common with the discontent roused by the im- 
prisonment of sea or air or plain, or at any rate it was so 
much an extension and deepening of that discontent in pro- 
portion to its richer diversity in unity and its simpler unity 
in diversity compared with the other as to move aside and 
pass to another level of emotion. The essential earthiness of 
the plain and the wateriness of the ocean and airiness of 
the air oppressed the mind merely with a despair of their 
changelessness in space. The sadness was finite and curable. 
The desire for blue to break on green or green on blue was 
communicable and attainable. But here, where he held all 
nature in a paradisal microcosm so to speak, and where he 
actually did stand on the top of Europe aware of all the in- 
numerable complications of social existence that were fed 
from this high silence, of hostile rivers that here were one, 
just as France and Germany and Italy were one in Switzer- 
land, there was only eternity beyond and around him. The 
sight of the sea could not cure this ache, nor any view of 
outspread plain, nor any flight into the air above. Here he 
was not imprisoned by any single element in time and space; 
but he was suffering a captivity that was all the more 
onerous because in this buoyant and lucid atmosphere he 
was to himself so imponderable that he felt like thistledown 
which, while it manages to present the appearance of as 
much volition as a sentient creature, is immeasurably more 
active and much more truly free in its submission to the 
lightest breath than any butterfly or bird in its deliberate 
flight. It seemed to Mark that by making the easiest act 
of faith he could be blown out of time into that eternity, the 
nearness of which so yearned him in this ethereal landscape 


334 The Heavenly Ladder 


and made him weary of its imperfection, just as when he 
was on the glacier the dirt and debris and broken surface 
became almost unendurable after he had peered into a 
crevasse and beheld the fiery blue of the virgin ice within. 

However, this sadness of the unattainable was presently 
swallowed up in discovering the sublime paradox that he had 
attained the unattainable by the very fact of not attaining it. 
Mark fell upon his knees among the starry flowers and 
thanked Almighty God for His infinite mercy. Above his 
prayer he heard those words of Eternal Life: 

I am the good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am 
known of Mine. 

As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father: 
and I lay down My life for the sheep. 

And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them 
also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there 
shall be one fold, and one shepherd. 

Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down 
My life, that I might take tt again. 

No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. 
I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take tt up 
again. 

A silvery mist had crept up the mountain side and turned 
the visible world to gossamer on which in a minuteness of 
liquid sound the tinklings of the cowbells were strung like 
drops of dew; but a moment afterward they were ringing so 
loudly that it seemed to be a mist of bells calling from the 
Divine Fold Itself. The cattle sometimes came near enough 
to appear as immense shadowy forms of faint gold with eyes 
of milk and wine in this evanescence of colour and transience 
of form which had supervened. 

“O Earth,” Mark cried, “how well do I perceive thee here 
as shifting and illusory, and even now as much more the 
shadow of thy own reality as thy own reality is less than the 
shadow of the shadow of Eternal Reality.” 

As he said this, the mist fell away like a veil, The starry 
flowers were visible again; the butterflies rose in clouds from 
every bush; the air throbbed and fluttered with the voices and 
the wings of jubilant birds; the sun beamed. 


The Heavenly Ladder 335 


“But yet, thou art the thought of God, and therefore thou 
art at once a shadow and a reality. It is through thy shadow 
that we apprehend the reality and through thy reality that we 
perceive the shadow. We can apprehend Eternity in thee 
and in ourselves, which is the reality, and we can perceive 
Mortality in thee and in ourselves, which is the shadow.” 

Once more Mark fell on his knees: 

“Almighty God, I thank Thee that out of Thy bountiful 
goodness Thou hast taken pity on my miserable faults and 
failures. Thou didst grant me Faith, and I lost it; Thou 
didst grant me Hope, and I lost it; Thou didst grant me 
Love, and I lost it. But now, O infinitely merciful Father, 
Thou hast revealed to me that by losing Faith and Hope and 
Love I have regained them by Thy Divine Grace a hundred- 
fold. For now I understand that none can be without the 
others and that they like Thyself are three in one and one in 
three, each perfect in its diversity and in its unity, the whole 
a perfect unity in diversity, a perfect diversity in unity.” 

When Mark reached his hotel that evening, he found an 
elderly English priest sitting on the wide balcony and looking 
out across the shadowy meadows and the dim pastures to 
where above them day was still in bloom upon the highest 
peaks like a late rose. They fell into conversation, found 
each other’s company pleasant, and agreed to dine together. 

The priest proved to be a Benedictine monk, the titular 
Abbot of some famous and noble foundation long ruined. 

“In partibus infidelium,’ Mark said. He was wondering 
if he should tell this beautiful and dignified old man that he 
was himself what the other would have called a Protestant 
minister, or perhaps more kindly an Anglican clergyman. 

The Abbot smiled, and asked his companion if he were a 
Catholic. 

Mark felt that it would be a gross discourtesy to reply as 
he once would have replied: “Not a Roman Catholic,” with 
a strong accent on the qualification. Yet he could not bring 
himself to answer with either a simple negative or affirmative. 

“Well, I suppose I’m not what you would call a Catholic,” 
he replied at last uncomfortably, “though I should not care 


336 The Heavenly Ladder 


to be called, and certainly not to call myself, a Protestant.” 

The Abbot smiled good-naturedly. 

“No controversy up here,” he said. “What I want at the 
moment is a good novel. One of the minor horrors of the 
war was the extinction of Tauchnitz, don’t you think? When 
I look back at my journeys abroad I see them in my old age 
all neatly bound up in a Tauchnitz volume.” 

“Alas, I haven’t travelled enough to appreciate your 
vision,’ Mark said. “You are evidently one of those travel- 
lers I always envy on the continent. No railway-station 
ever seems to disturb their equanimity, and they are not even 
frightened of hotel-clerks. And, most infallible sign of 
their continental citizenship, no guide ever questions their 
enviable assurance.” 

“Ah,” said the Abbot, shaking his head, “you’re talking of 
Europe before the war. Since the capitals were invaded by 
passport disorganizations continental citizenship has ceased 
to exist. Now what are we drinking?” 

“Oh, I’m not going to commit myself with this wine-list,” 
Mark answered. 

The Abbot examined it with care. 

“I believe we shall be as safe with an Italian wine as with 
anything. Ah, here’s a Barolo which may not be at all bad.” 

“T am in your power as the cork is in the power of the 
corkscrew,’ Mark observed. 

“Not always,” the Abbot chuckled. “And the softer the 
cork, the harder to draw. If immediately on top of that 
remark I ask you where you were during the war, please 
don’t think I do so as a protest against your reserve.” 

They both laughed heartily. 

“T was in France from 1916 onwards,” Mark told him. 

“Wounded ?” 

“Yes, but not badly.” 

“Well, it’s over now,” the Abbot said. 

*I hope so.” 

“You sound a little doubtful.” 

“Well, I hope that the politicians are not going to mess 
up the prospects of peace after the war as successfully as 
they messed up the prospects of peace before it,” Mark said. 


The Heavenly Ladder 337 


“T heard a retort the other day which amused me. It was 
apropos of something that Lloyd George or one of them 
had said about making a land fit for heroes to live in. ‘Yes,’ 
this fellow commented, ‘it would take a hero to live in it 
now.’ ” 

“Anyway, we have the League of Nations,” the Abbot 
suggested. 

“Do you really believe in any possibility of such a hotch- 
potch of ideals, interests, and ambitions becoming vital?” 
Mark asked. 

“T do and I don’t,” the Abbot replied. ‘As a Christian 
and a Catholic I can’t help feeling that the Church offers all 
that and more than the League of Nations offers, and that 
what the Church has not yet been able to effect is hardly 
likely to be effected by a body without any visible or, I fear, 
invisible unity. As a humanitarian I rejoice to see the tem- 
porary triumph of what is a genuine ideal over the forces of 
cynicism; but I cannot see an enduring life for any League 
of Nations that refuses to admit the vanquished to its coun- 
cils. However, I pray that Almighty God will bless the 
work, for anything that tends, however ineffectively, toward 
the unity of the human race will help the hearts of men to 
desire that perfect unity in which Catholics recognize the 
only possible future, institutionally speaking, for the world.” 

The conversation turned away from serious topics for the 
rest of dinner, and afterward they took their coffee on the 
verandah of the hotel in the face of a full moon that almost 
seemed to bump along the mountains like a great silver ball 
until she made her southing and hung serene and clear at the 
head of the pass. 

The placidity of the moonlight encouraged confidences, 
and Mark was several times on the verge of asking advice 
of the old priest about his future; but each time that he tried 
to frame the question his heart failed him, for he knew that 
there was only one piece of advice that the Abbot could give 
him and that, if he should argue against it from his own 
point of view, this old man, on whose tongue was wisdom 
and in whose eyes burned holiness, might suppose him to be 
no more than one of so many religious hypochondriacs whose 


338 The Heavenly Ladder 


main object was the discussion of their own symptoms and 
whose interest in the cure was measured entirely by the 
amount of importance it lent to the supposed variety or 
singularity of the symptoms. The answer was so obvious 
really, and if he should insist on the fact that he was already 
a priest, the Abbot would just shrug his shoulders and pro- 
pose a more profitable subject for friendly intercourse after 
dinner. A younger cleric might enjoy such an argument and 
find a pleasure in destroying his companion’s logic, might 
even derive great spiritual satisfaction from a successful 
conversion. But this ripe old man was not likely to care 
much about that. He represented something in humanity 
that was as solid and as impressive as the mountains oppo- 
site. That face, clear-cut in the moonlight as the outline of 
a crag, had long outlived the pleasures of persuasion. Why 
should he bother to argue about the claims of the Church? 
Of what that Church was his personality was a living proof. 
Why should he: bother to convert an individual Anglican 
whose desire for the true religion would present itself to his 
judgment at its best as the kind of tepid idealism of the 
League of Nations, as something to be helped with prayer, 
but not as something to argue about, and certainly not as 
something to argue with. 

“You are pensive,” the Abbot said. 

“It’s this sublunary’ world,” Mark: replied. “I was think- 
ing about the League of Nations.” He wanted to add: “And 
its resemblance to the Church of England.” But he was 
ashamed to give an impression of sneering at his birthright 
of Anglicanism. 7 

“The trouble with such an association,” said the Abbot, 
sipping wryly his glass of gentiana, a detestable liqueur, but 
the only one that the hotel could produce in those desiccated 
times, “the trouble, apart from its preliminary assumption 
that the vanquished nations are utterly in the wrong and the 
conquerors as utterly in the right, is what looks like proving 
the incompatibility of English and French ambitions. Each 
great nation will be liable to obtain its support from the 
smaller nations in much the same way as a party leader. The 
very interest that Lord Robert Cecil takes in it is almost a 


The Heavenly Ladder 339 


guarantee of the application of the principle of party gov- 
ernment. Now, the Latin nations have no conception of 
party government as we understand the business in England. 
They cannot imagine the amount of compromise, self-sacri- 
fice, and discipline that is necessary to carry on the system 
we have in England. Opposition with them must have a 
concrete object to oppose. It must be dictated either by 
strong feeling that what the other side wishes to do is wrong, 
or by a determination to bring about the fall of a demagogue 
who has had his run. They have no tradition of politics as 
a game for grown-up men to take the place of the cricket or 
football of youth. An amateur politician will always seem 
to them an anomaly. Indeed, they won’t believe in him, and 
the bewilderment that Sir Edward Grey created in the Euro- 
pean mind during the war will be re-created by Lord Robert 
Cecil, should the League of Nations endure for more than a 
year or two, after the war.” 

“Is the incompatibility as much between the Anglo-Saxon 
point of view,’ Mark queried, “as between the insular and 
the continental? And of course the trouble now is that we 
have allowed America, whose culture is largely built up on 
the middle-class English culture, to beat us at our own game. 
We may be a nation of shopkeepers; but America is a nation 
of co-operative stores, an emporium, not an imperium.” 

“But we are not a nation of shopkeepers,” the Abbot de- 
clared forcibly. “Or if we are, the French must be accounted 
a nation of female bargain-hunters; and I think we may 
allow them a keener commercial instinct than the dignified 
and conservative English shopkeepers. But of course we are 
not a nation of shopkeepers. We were not dragged into this 
war out of anything except sentiment. We heard France 
screaming like a woman and we saw Belgium being knocked 
about like a little girl; and that is the only reason why the 
English nation entered this war. I am not talking about 
politicians or soldiers or sailors or newspaper-proprietors. 
But they are not the English nation. It was precisely that 
sentimental but profoundly sincere conviction of the morality 
of our action which made the English nation suppose the 
Pope to be a pro-German, because he tried to keep sentiment 


340 The Heavenly Ladder 


out of his attitude. It is impossible to make the average 
Englishman understand that the Pope was bound to take 
many other motives into consideration besides the English- 
man’s consciousness of his own chivalry, and that in time of 
war matters of fact and matters of opinion are not so clearly 
divided as they might be.” 

“You're right about the sentimental Englishman,’ Mark 
said. “Really the relation between England and France is 
rapidly approximating to that of two lovers who have formed 
a liaison, and who while the hard world was against them 
were able with a few tiffs to fight through. Now when the 
need to fight has gone by they are trying to think of a way 
of regularizing their position. England the man is anxious 
to get on with his business, and is beginning to find that 
France the woman is rather a responsibility. France wants 
marriage, or in other words an alliance, and England is ready 
to marry her provided that rich Uncle Sam will guarantee 
some of the household expenses. France suspects that Eng- 
land really doesn’t want to marry her. And England vows 
he does, so long as it can be managed. England talks a great 
deal of all that the two of them have gone through together ; 
but the more realistic woman (who only affects sentiment 
and romance when in distress) requires wedlock. England 
would like to let the love-affair fade out to a warm friend- 
ship. America, the sentimental uncle, even more sentimental 
than England, thinks that it’s time the two young people 
earned their own living. He has come to their rescue at a 
time of stress, but he is afraid of being asked to contribute 
to their European establishment indefinitely. He distrusts 
the various country estates which they are acquiring, and he 
is not at all placated by being advised to buy one for himself 
in Armenia.” 

“And yet,” the Abbot went on, “one may wish that a real 
marriage could have been brought about between the two 
nations—a religious marriage however, not a lay contract, 
which is all that a military alliance would mean.” The old 
man fell into a reverie. “What an effect upon the world! 
What a hope for the future of humanity,’ he murmured to 
himself presently. “If only France and England could re- 


The Heavenly Ladder 341 


nounce their nationalism, and in that renunciation regain the 
incomparably richer nationalism of the Church . . . dreams 
feeemtcredins:,..)2 idle) dreams... Yet 1t 1s hard: to’ con- 
template such an expense of heroism and endurance, such 
an outpouring of constancy and valour and unselfishness for 
nothing that really matters. That the peace of Europe 
should only be secured by the exhaustion of the combatants 
does seem a fruitless result of such a seedtime of blood. We 
expected a new world to be born from that immense catas- 
trophe. Many still profess to behold that new world shining 
before us. Alas, I fear that it shines without warmth, like 
the moon. We cannot know the individual benefit from so 
much suffering. I believe that we incur a grave moral dan- 
ger by talking too much in terms of peoples. To be sure I 
have no business to be theorizing about individuals, for what 
have I suffered in myself? But you who have been through 
it, do you feel that resentment against Almighty God which 
some of the intellectual humanitarians I know seem to feel 
so strongly? It struck me just now, when you were elabo- 
rating your comparison of England and France to a pair of 
lovers trying to escape from an entanglement without losing 
its sentimental value, and in the case of the lady without 
forgoing the practical advantages of a regular union, it 
struck me that the cynicism of the moment had got hold of 
you. I firmly believe that such cynicism is only the reaction 
of fatigue to any great enterprise nobly carried through. 
The best book we write becomes wearisome to ourselves 
before it is finished, and we are apt to laugh at it.” 

“On the contrary,” Mark affirmed, “I have never felt less 
cynical than at this moment. I’m afraid the superficial re- 
semblance led me on into making rather a cheap simile. And 
in any case I was thinking more of the politicians. After 
three years in the army one acquires an almost mechanical 
dislike and distrust of politicians. Yet really when I look 
back on the war I’m beginning to think now that more of 
our mistakes were due to the incompetency of the Higher 
Command than to the blundering of politicians. But this is 
not the time to jeer at politicians or generals, and you must 
just regard it as a bad habit acquired in the trenches.” 


342 The Heavenly Ladder 


“T’m ashamed to ask you questions about your experi- 
ences,’ the Abbot said, “but, you know, ancient non- 
combatants like myself have never lost our interest in the 
activities of younger men. If you feel disinclined to talk 
about your own part in the war, don’t hesitate to tell me so 
and close my senile lips. Were you an officer ?” 

Mark shook his head. 

“T wasn’t even a corporal,” he explained. “But I ought 
to tell you first of all that I’m an Anglican priest.” 

“Ah, you were a chaplain P” 

“No, no,” said Mark. “I enlisted and fought in the ranks. 
I had been deprived of my living for disobeying my Bishop. 
I don’t expect that it would interest you to hear the history 
of my ecclesiastical career.” 

“On the contrary,” the Abbot replied, “it would interest 
me extremely.” 

Mark felt that it would be a discourtesy not to take the 
Abbot at his word, and he launched forth upon the history 
of Nancepean. 

“T thought that I should be able to decide best about my 
future in the Church of England by trying to look at it from 
outside. Perhaps I didn’t expect that I should be given such 
a long time in which to reach a conclusion, though as a mat- 
ter of fact it wasn’t long enough, for I’ve not yet reached 
that conclusion. Yet when I was wounded I had a strange 
mental experience out of which I ought to be able to make 
something.” 

“Tell me about that,” the Abbot invited, “unless of course 
you feel that it is something too intimate to repeat to an 
inquisitive old man.” 

“T will tell you about it willingly,” Mark replied, “though 
it will sound just like a feverish dream in the repetition, and 
indeed it was so inseparably bound up with the shock of the 
explosion that I have been tempted to regard it as nothing 
more than the extravagance of delirium. Yet the vividness 
with which it remains in my memory, and not merely in my 
memory, but incorporated within my present outlook, gives 
it a reality that the visions of fever usually lack.” 


The Heavenly Ladder 343 


With this Mark tried to convey his thoughts when he was 
lying wounded on the edge of the mine-crater. 

“Have you ever read the Vita e Dottrina of St. Catherine 
of Genoa?” the Abbot asked. 

“T’ve often meant to, but I never have,’ Mark replied. 
“Why do you ask?” 

“Your vision of the golden chain with the hook at the 
end of it reminds me curiously of her experience. Some- 
where, if I remember rightly, she speaks of God descending 
by the golden thread of His secret love to the end of which is 
fastened a hook, which catches up man by his heart and 
draws him nearer to God. I haven’t read the words for 
many years, and I may be misquoting. You get the same 
idea in Dionysius, whose luminous rope suspended from 
Heaven touches earth and enables us to climb up by it. With 
him it is a symbol of prayer. You get the same analogy 
somewhere in Plato. Is it in the Theatetus or the Republic? 
And you even get it in the /liad when the gods descend by a 
golden chain from Olympus to earth. But the parallel with 
St. Catherine doesn’t stop here, for in the dialogue between 
her and the Lord, He tells her that His love can better be 
known by inward experience than in any other way, and that, 
for man to gain this Love, Love must snatch man from 
himself, because it is his self that is his own chief obstacle.” 

“And now my trouble,” said Mark, “is to know what to do 
with my new self, or rather as I ought to try to think it my 
new non-self. The generosity of a dead friend has left me 
with a small independence, so that I have been spared the 
necessity of an immediate decision. Since I have been here 
and wandered about these high mountains I have discovered 
more about God than ever before. I’m not suggesting a kind 
of nature-worship, and in saying that I have discovered more 
about God here, I think I am not being quite accurate; I think 
that I have discovered all I know of God from the love of 
children and the love of my fellow Tommies; but that love 
became crystallized up here, and by looking through it as this 
triplicity of earth, air, and water I have apprehended some- 
thing of God’s perfect unity in perfect diversity. I seek now 
the unity that shall gather up the diversity of my. own soul. 


344 The Heavenly Ladder 


I feel that it lies in the Catholic Church, but I cannot deny 
my Orders. I cannot believe that I am not a priest, that 
every Absolution I have given and every Mass I have said 
were without sacramental efficacy. To you I must seem like 
a swimmer breasting an ocean of moonshine such as that 
which spreads before us at this moment; but what to you is 
moonshine, to me is fathomless water on which I lack the 
faith to walk, and in which I have not the courage to drown.” 

Mark was silent, nor did the Abbot speak for several 
minutes. 

“My son,” he said at last, “it would be idle to argue with 
you, for neither you nor I should gain anything by argu- 
ment. A Thomist might say that you are drawing near to 
the Church by the wrong road. But I should be tempted to 
ask such a theologian if there can be a wrong road to salva- 
tion. And I believe that St. Benedict would say that you 
were drawing near by the right road. By the way, have you 
ever studied the Rule?” 

Mark thought of the days long ago in the Order of Saint 
George; but he could not persuade himself to reveal the cir- 
cumstances in which he had studied the Rule of St. Benedict. 

“T have not studied it for a long time,” he said. 

“T commend it to you,” the Abbot went on, “though I am 
not going to suggest the particular chapters that might answer 
your question. ‘Let that rest for the moment. Up here in 
these mountains you have drawn near to God. You seek to 
know how you may keep yourself from losing that precious 
knowledge. The Grace of God alone can do that. Your 
mystical experiences have perhaps—I speak in all humility— 
have perhaps not taught you quite all you might have learnt 
fromthem. There was once a more objective vision accorded 
to one who was no mystic. It was no golden chain or lumi- 
nous rope, but a ladder upon which the angels of God were 
beheld ascending and descending. It was, if one may say so, 
a more practical affair in some ways than your chain. I 
could wish you might behold it. Meanwhile, may I suggest 
that you should pay a visit to Monte Cassino, and if when 
you have visited Monte Cassino you still lack an answer to 
your question, I hope that you will go to Subiaco. But do 


The Heavenly Ladder 345 


not go to Subiaco first. I will give you letters, so that you 
may not feel a tourist. Not that such letters are necessary in 
any Benedictine house. And now let me beg you to put aside 
from your mind for a little while the problems you are trying 
to solve for yourself, and help me to find a good novel.” 

Mark understood that the Abbot intended by this last 
remark to express his belief that one can talk about oneself 
too much, was indeed dismissing him like a doctor who has 
written out his prescription. 

A day or two later they travelled together as far as a 
central railway station whence the Abbot journeyed north 
to England, and Mark went south to Italy. He heard Mass 
on the feast of the Ascension in the church of Trinita dei 
Monti, but he did not linger in Rome, and he reached Monte 
Cassino in the week before Pentecost. 

Mark left behind him the squalid and noisy little town of 
San Germano which lies in the shadow of that venerable 
mountain whose summit is capped with the buildings of the 
monastery as inevitably as Vesuvius is haunted by its cloud 
of vapour. He had rejected the idea of driving up by the 
modern carriage road, preferring to ascend on foot by the 
ancient mule-track so that he might follow as it were the 
natural curve of the progress of European civilization, for 
Monte Cassino is the very abstract of history in the external 
evidence it offers of what man was and is and may be, and 
the very essence of humanity in the way it shows the activity 
of evil transformed to produce the activity of good, turned 
back sometimes toward evil, but always by the grace and 
mercy of Almighty God rescued finally for good. 

The classic view widened beneath Mark’s feet; although 
he could not name the famous mountains and cities he be- 
held, it affected him like the golden timelessness of a land- 
scape by Claude. This was the season when the Italian 
harvest goes rioting to a prodigal culmination. The corn 
between the olive-trees was already yellowing; the cherries 
were flushed ; the scent of the vine-flowers was heavy on the 
air. And yet somehow it was still spring. The drouthy 
cicalas had not yet filled the orchards with their fritiniency, 
so that he still heard the murmur of bees, and listened to the 


346 The Heavenly ladder 


mountain-thrush singing and saw him flash his black and 
azure plumes among the boulders on either side of the track. 
Mark pressed on. A Gothic castle poised upon a peak over- 
hanging San Germano on the farther side: the remains of a 
Roman amphitheatre: a tomb of measureless antiquity: a 
grove of primeval holm-oaks left here by St. Benedict to 
mark where once Venus was worshipped in their shadow: an 
Austrian fort: a modern carriage road: a wooden cross, and 
on the rock beneath it the print of St. Benedict’s knees where 
he knelt to pray God to grant him strength to drive away 
from this mountain Apollo and Venus, the demons to whom 
sacrifices were still offered here: a line of cyclopean walls, 
the relics of some Pelasgian citadel older even than that 
tomb: the great abbey, with its innumerable small windows 
and austere facade, rising from terraced groves and gar- 
dens: a Roman gate-tower for entrance, the same under 
which Benedict had passed coming from Subiaco over thir- 
teen hundred years ago and in the upper storey of which he 
had made his cell: all these outward signs he beheld. 

Mark had not expected from the severity of the outer 
walls to find within their enclosure that light and lovely 
cortile of Bramante breathing the spirit of the Renaissance. 
St. Benedict had thrown down the altar of Apollo and re- 
placed it with one to St. John the Baptist. Fragments of the 
old pagan marble were still to be seen; but the Apollo thus 
humiliated was a debased deity. What had been worth while 
in his worship once had surely been exquisitely revived in 
this cortile. Might not even Dante had thought so? 


Quel monte, a cut Cassino é nella costa, 
Fu frequentato gia in su la cima 

Dalla gente ingannata e mal disposta. 

Ed to son quel che su vi portai prima 

Lo nome di colut che’n terra addusse 

La verita, che tanto cit sublima; 

E tanta grazia sovra me rilusse 

Ch’io ritrassi le ville circostanti 

Dall empio culto che’l mondo sedusse. 


The Heavenly Ladder 347 


But when Mark first saw Bernini’s florid basilica with its 
cherubs and draperies, its roses and garlands and gilt, he 
began to wonder if Dante might not have been scandalized 
as much by it as by the thought of the deceived worshippers 
who once came here to consult the fraudulent oracle. And 
might not Benedict himself have rejoiced that his bones 
should lie in Fleury on the Loire, counting the cherubs of 
Bernini’s basilica worse than the Lombard hordes which had 
overrun his mountain and driven him forth, heresy though 
it were to whisper here one’s belief that the bones of the holy 
father no longer reposed in their first tomb? But when Mark 
saw the crypt decorated by the German monks of Meuron 
and heard the exclamations of outraged Italian taste, he be- 
gan to apprehend that immense unity in diversity of the 
Benedictine Order. Each congregation might seem a house- 
hold, but each household was indeed a congregation. St. 
Gregory said that Benedict beheld God and in that vision of 
God beheld the whole world. St. Thomas was not able to 
accept this; but Mark, gazing out across Campania from the 
loggia del Paradiso, saw Aquino far down below at his feet, 
and he believed that St. Benedict did behold that light which 
is the Creator and in that light the whole world as if within 
a single ray of the sun; yes, the whole world—spatially and 
temporally, the length and depth and breadth of it, the be- 
ginning and the end. Such a vision was almost necessary to 
explain the perseverance of the mighty patriarch, for the age 
in which he lived must have seemed irreclaimably corrupt 
and inextricably confused. The night of barbarism was 
settling down upon Europe with nothing to illumine its dark- 
ness except the bloody lightnings of war or the ashen fires of 
pestilence and famine. Christianity handed over to the rabid 
wolf of Arianism seemed incapable of surviving the perse- 
cution of the Vandal, the Goth, and the Visigoth. Art, 
literature, morality, law, and justice overwhelmed: heresies 
and schisms rife: feeble popes under the heels of brutal 
princes. This was the world from which the young patrician 
fled in order to regain it for God, not by fantastic austerities, 
but by work and prayer, by clothing the naked and healing 
the sick, by relieving debtors and helping the afflicted, by 


348 The Heavenly Ladder 


cherishing the poor and entertaining travellers, and by bury- 
ing the dead. He and his followers devoted themselves to 
sustaining a normal Christianity as laymen, not as priests. 
They preserved the continuity of the Christian tradition, and 
in doing so they preserved all that man had won in his up- 
ward struggle. Well did Urban VIII say that Benedict 
deserved while yet in this mortal life to behold God Himself 
and in God all that was below Him. Mark wondered if any- 
body had called Benedict the second Noah, or likened Monte 
Cassino to Ararat and the Abbey resting on its summit to 
the Ark, for compared with this the League of Nations on 
the shores of Geneva was no more than a crazy barge which 
the first small flood would submerge. 

Although Mark appreciated the Abbot’s intention in ad- 
vising him to go to Monte Cassino, he could not help saying 
to himself that it told him nothing he did not know already 
of the Catholic idea, and very little that he did not know 
already of the Catholic reality. Before he left the monastery 
and plunged down again toward the lowlands of Campania, 
he came upon an inscription carved upon a solitary rock: 


O Padre nostro che sei net ciel affratella a not lInghil- 
terra nella unita della Fede. 


“Our Father Who art in Heaven make England a brother 
of ours in the unity of the Faith.” 

Yes, but how could that be so long as post-Tridentine 
Catholicism made its ultramontane claims upon England? 
How could that be so long as hundreds of English priests 
were not recognized as priests? The way to reunion was 
barred by Rome, as securely as it always had been barred. 

Yet, when Mark was in the train and looked back at that 
mountain, immutable and grand from every point of the 
compass, appearing and disappearing with the curves of the 
railway-line, until at last it vanished, a cloudy pile, into the 
remoteness of the lucid air, he felt like the dove that was 
sent out from the ark, the dove that found no rest for the 
sole of her foot; and he wished that he could return to that 
ark with a pluckt olive-leaf as a token that the waters of 


The Heavenly Ladder 349 


war were abated from off the earth and that the true peace 
of faith, hope, and love in unity was achieved. 

Why had the Abbot warned him so particularly to visit 
Subiaco after Monte Cassino? Why was he to reverse the 
footsteps of St. Benedict? 

The train roared on across the Campagna. Rome’s ghost 
since her decease, Browning had called that immense form 
of air and grass strewn with the bones of aqueducts. 


The champatgn with its endless fleece 
Of feathery grasses everywhere! 

Silence and passion, joy and peace, 
An everlasting wash of air— 

Rome’s ghost since her decease. 


Mark, gazing out of the windows of the carriage, made 
up his mind to journey to Subiaco on foot. | 

He left Rome very early next morning and slept at Tivoli; 
but he did not stay long amid those enchanted groves and 
grottos, those temples and tumbling green cascades, for he 
wished to reach the Abbey of Santa Scolastica by Friday 
evening, so that he might spend the vigil of Pentecost in 
Benedict’s Sacred Cave. The mountains closed in upon 
the road, which grew wilder with every step. He hurried 
faster and faster, his heart beating with the conviction 
that somehow before he trod this road again he should be at 
peace. 

Mark reached the abbey about dusk; and next day at dawn 
he climbed the steep mile that separated it from the smaller 
monastery of the Sacro Speco. As at Monte Cassino, the 
pilgrim passed through a grove of primeval ilex-trees before 
he drew near to the object of his pilgrimage. These relics 
of that fabled Saturnian age must have shaded the footsteps 
of Benedict when he first came here centuries ago. Did he 
mark the glinting of the sun’s golden patens on the mossy 
ground, or was his mind already intent on those three years 
of contemplation that were to fit him for the task he had in 
hand? Yes, he must have noticed this holy virgin shade and 
willed that no man should violate it with wedge and axe 


350 The Heavenly Ladder 


until the end of time. And when he and his companions 
were driven to flight by the abominable Florentius, perhaps 
on Monte Cassino he had spared the holm-oaks of Venus in 
memory of this grove. 

Mark emerged into the sunlight and saw in front of him 
the monastery of the Sacro Speco, built on huge arches into 
the face of the cliff. He passed through a Gothic doorway 
inscribed above with the names of the illustrious pilgrims 
who had visited this holy spot—twenty saints and fourteen 
popes besides many princes, queens, and emperors, and en- 
tered the highest of the three churches built one on top of 
the other to enclose the upper and the lower caves of St. 
Benedict, the oldest Gothic churches in Italy and worthy 
to enshrine what for long had been the beating heart of 
Christianity. 

Mark spent hour after hour wandering up and down the 
Holy Stairs from shrine to shrine and from church to church 
in that dim harmony of multitudinous forms and fancies. 
Every arch and every ceiling and every wall was a paradise 
of glowing frescoes, and every smallest bit of space was a 
jewel of colour or a gleam of gold, except where here and 
there the naked rock broke into the building and brought 
home to the pilgrim that this was indeed the cave of Benedict 
and that all this radiant conception of Christian faith was 
only made possible by that three years’ sojourn among the 
savage and inhospitable rocks during which he learnt from 
God the wisdom and the strength to save the world for 
civilization. 

Of all the frescoes that which drew Mark’s steps back 
oftenest to gaze upon it was the contemporary portrait of St. 
Francis of Assisi, who, in 1218 or 1222, midway between St. 
Benedict and ourselves, had turned aside to worship here. 
The fresco must have been painted as nowadays one would 
take a photograph, for the portrait was of plain Brother 
Francis without the stigmata, without the saintly nimbus, 
with nothing but a scroll in his left hand inscribed Pax huic 
domut. 

Peace to this house! That long, thin face and sparse 
beard beneath the high pointed hood, the prominent ears, 


The Heavenly Ladder 351 


the fine hands and nose and frail neck, and, beyond all, those 
eyes at once humorous, ecstatic, grave, and compassionate of 
God’s Little Poor Man of Assisi, had a vitality even in this 
fresco far greater than the vitality of any living person 
Mark had ever met. The face of Christ shone out from that 
Byzantine portraiture; and even as Francis was granted to 
wear his Saviour’s wounds, so might he have been granted 
the image of his Saviour’s countenance. Brother Odo, the 
diffident little Benedictine monk who painted it, had added a 
miniature of himself kneeling at the saint’s feet, and even in 
that humble position only daring to show his face and 
clasped hands. Perhaps he had timidly painted himself in 
when Francis was canonized ten years later. 

Mark went out at last into the roseto, a diminutive garden 
made by terracing the rocks in the angle of the monastery 
buildings. This place, once a thicket of briers, had been the 
scene of St. Benedict’s great temptation of the flesh, which 
he had overcome by rolling his body among the thorns until 
it was covered with wounds. God’s Little Poor Man had 
visited this: place hundreds of years afterwards and had 
grafted on the briers sweet-scented double-roses ; and to this 
day these roses of St. Francis had remained here, and there 
were no thorns upon them. 

Mark sat down and gave himself up to the sweet influences 
of this ledge in space The mighty face of the mountain 
rose behind him, and the little garden came to an end just 
beyond where he was sitting, in a precipice that ran sheer 
to the bed of the sounding Anio fat below. All else was 
the vivid blue of the Italian sky. He took from his pocket 
the Rule of St. Benedict, and began to read: 


Of the various kinds of monks. 

It is obvious that there are four kinds of monks. The 
first are the Cenobites, that is those who do thew service 
im a monastery under a rule and an abbot. 

The second are the Anchorites, that is Hermits who, 
not m the first zest of conversion, but by the datly trials 
of the monastery have already learnt by the help of the 
many to fight against the devil; and going forth well 


352 The Heavenly Ladder 


armed from the ranks of thew brethren to the stngle- 
handed combat of the solitary place are now able to fight 
in safety without the help of others and by their own 
exertions to overcome, under God’s aid, the vices of the 
flesh and their own evil thoughts. 


Yet St. Benedict himself fought the solitary fight before 
he founded his order and won it when still a young man in 
his twenties: But he feared solitude for others, and he was 
right to fear it. Such a solitude as his own at Nancepean, 
Mark thought with a shudder, might easily have brought 
him to damnation, if he had not fled from it into what had 
really been a kind of monasticism, the active service of war. 
Yes, St. Benedict used militans in the original Latin to de- 
scribe the service of monks who lived under a rule and abbot. 


A third and truly detestable kmd of monks are the Sara- 
_ baites, who having been tried by no rule as gold is tried by 
the fire, and having learnt nothing from experience, and 
being soft as lead, keep faith with the world in their works 
while, as their tonsure proves, they le to God. These men 
in twos or threes or singly without a shepherd shut them- 
selves up not in the Lord’s sheepfolds, but in their own, 
where they make a law for themselves out of the pleasure 
of gratifying their own desires. Whatever they think or 
choose to do, that they call holy, and what they do not like, 
that they consider unlawful. 


The tinkling cowbells of the high Alpine pastures sounded 
again through the silvery mist. 


And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them 
also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there 
shall be one fold and one shepherd. 


A sharp question cut the golden meshes of his fine-spun 


meditation. 
Was not the Church of England a church of Sarabaites? 


The Heavenly Ladder 353 


The fourth kind of monks are those called Gyrovagues, 
who spend their whole lives in wandering about different 
provinces, staying in different cells for three or four days 
at a time, always roaming, never stable, given up to their 
own pleasures and the snares of gluttony, and worse m 
every way than the Sarabasites. In regard to thew miser- 
able existence silence is better than speech. 


A sharper question pierced his soul. 

Was not he himself a Gyrovague? 

Mark spent that night between sleeping and waking, and 
always in the darkness the stern face of St. Benedict re- 
proached him and always the eyes of St. Francis pitied him, 
and prayed for him, and laughed at him; but at Mass the 
church was filled with a sound from Heaven as of a rushing 
mighty wind, and Mark heard above that sound Truth 
speaking with the voice of a little child: 


If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself; and 
take up his cross daily, and follow Me. 

For whosoever will save lis life shall lose tt: but whoso- 
ever will lose us life for My sake, the same shall save it. 


After Mass he went out into the rose-garden and denied 
himself, saying: “I am not a priest,” and a profound tran- 
quillity fell upon his soul. 

He opened the Rule of St. Benedict and read: 


Whence, brethren, 1f we wish to attain the summit of 
humility and swiftly to reach that heavenly exaltation to 
which we can only ascend by the humility of this present 
life, we must by our ever-ascending actions erect such a 
ladder as that which Jacob saw m Ins dream, by which the 
angels appeared descending and ascending. This descent 
and ascent are to be understood by us not otherwise than 
that we descend by exaltation and ascend by humility. 
And the ladder thus erected 1s our life in the world, which 
tf the heart be humbled ts raised by the Lord to Heaven. 
The sides of this ladder we call our body and soul, and in 
its sides the Devine Call has inserted the various rungs of 
humility’s discipline by which we may ascend: 


354 The Heavenly Ladder 


THE FEAR OF GOD. 

THE SURRENDER OF SELF WILL. 

THE OBEDIENCE TO OTHERS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. 

THE DELIGHT IN THE HARDSHIPS OF SUCH OBEDIENCE. 

THE CONFESSION OF OUR SINS. 

TO BE CONTENT WITH THE WORST AND ESTEEM ONESELF A 
BAD WORKMAN. 

TO CALL ONESELF VILER THAN ALL AND TO BELIEVE IT. 

TO KEEP THE RULE AND TO IMITATE ONE’S SENIORS. 

TO KEEP ONE’S TONGUE SILENT UNTIL ASKED A QUESTION. 

TO BE NOT EASILY MOVED TO LAUGHTER. 

TO SPEAK GENTLY, HUMBLY, AND GRAVELY. 

TO SHOW THE HUMILITY OF THE HEART IN THE BEARING 
OF THE BODY. 


Mysterious Ladder which St. Thomas Aquinas preferred 
to put the other way round! There was something that 
even the angelic Doctor did not know. 


Having, therefore, ascended all the rungs of humility, 
the monk will soon reach the love of God, which being per- 
fect puts fear out of doors whereby he shall begin to keep 
all precepts, whch hitherto he used to observe with some 
dread, without striving and as it were naturally and habitu- 
ally, no longer through fear of hell, but for the love of 
Christ ond out of the good habit of virtue and delight in 
it: which God will deign to show forth by the Holy Ghost 
dwelling in His workman now cleansed from his vices and 
his sins. 


Mark fell on his knees. 


O Holy Ghost, Thou Who in the bosom of the Holy 
Trinity art the indissoluble bond, the living tie, and the 
eternal embrace between the Father and the Son, unite me 
to our Lord Jesus Christ and through Him to the Father. 
Grant me the temper for that region and that sanctuary 
where our life 1s established for ever. 

Grant me to reach it by the one way which Our Lord 
traced and Himself followed: the humility of little children. 


The Heavenly Ladder 355 


Mark longed to be received into the Church immediately ; 
but he thought that it would be presumptuous to seek re- 
ception here. So, on the feast of St. Anthony of Padua, 
he came to Crapano and asked the parroco to give him 
instruction in the Catholic Faith. 

The parroco was enchanted by the prospect of receiving 
an Englishman into the Church, and ascribed it to the grati- 
fication of St. Anthony at the lavish way in which his chil- 
dren had just celebrated his feast. He had been starved 
of fireworks, poverino, throughout the war, but they had 
made up for it this year as Mark would admit. Yes, Mark 
would be the first Englishman he should have had the privi- 
lege of converting. 

“Mail nostro padre Sant’ Antomo é buon’ assai! Dovrebbe 
essere molto contento che la guerra sia finita.” 

The good man set out to look for the penny catechism, 
and when he had found the little green booklet he suggested 
that Mark should grapple with its theology a few pages at a 
time. 

“Piano, piano! Forse Lei non captsce, ma sara un poco 
difficile.” 

Mark was not to overstrain his memory. When one was 
no longer a child, it was difficult to learn things by heart. 

Mark promised that he would turn himself back into a 
child so as to learn the catechism by all his heart. 

“Bravo!” the parroco cried. “’E bella, la giovinezza!”’ 

Mark agreed that youth was very beautiful. And he, like 
a child, was beginning life all over again. 


BXPEICIT. 


fmootoonit ll) LO C.K. SCOTT MONCRIEFF. 


My dear Charles, 


I lack the wisdom, the learning, and the holiness for 
propaganda. As I know that you for one will acquit me of 


356 The Heavenly Ladder 


such a presumptuous intention, I am giving myself the pleas- 
ure of writing your name at the end of a novel called Faith, 
Hope, and Charity. 
Yours ever, 
Compton Mackenzie. 
ISLE OF JETHOU. 
March, 1924. 


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